For large school networks, creating efficient and effective schedules across multiple campuses presents unique challenges. Each school has its own needs and constraints, and network leaders need consistency in approach and quality. This challenge is particularly acute for large charter management organizations (CMOs), which, like large school districts, often operate with lean back-office teams while maintaining high expectations for autonomous, campus-level decision-making, innovation, and results.

Noble Schools, Chicago’s largest charter network with 17 secondary campuses, partnered with Timely to transform their scheduling process network-wide. The partnership resulted in four key outcomes:

1. Efficiency Gains: Schools saved an average of 25-50 hours, completing schedules earlier and freeing school leaders to focus on instruction.
2. Quality Improvements: On average, ~96% of students received their full course requests through the initial scheduling process; only ~4% of students required minor, manual adjustments, such as hand-placing them into one or two classes. 
3. Focus on Access: A standardized process allowed for equitable schedules and ensured students with high needs were prioritized in special education and multilingual programs.
4. Strong support for new schedulers: First-year schedulers gave Timely a perfect Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 100.

Why Scheduling Matters

Scheduling is one of the most complex responsibilities of a school system. It’s no wonder school leaders struggle to develop schedules within their already constrained time and resources. And their counterparts within central offices are often not equipped to support them nor have visibility into the staffing and budget implications of the master schedule.

In order to address these complexities, it’s critical that schools develop a ground-up schedule predicated on student needs. And in order to build strategic schedules, education leaders need both support and more sophisticated implementation tools that are powered by technology.

In a report by the Center for Public Leadership and Research (CPRL) at Columbia University, researchers write:

In other words, current solutions – clunky SIS embedded schedulers, messy spreadsheets whiteboards, magnet tiles – are insufficient. Education leaders, by accessing sophisticated technology-enabled tools and support, can leverage strategic scheduling to address critical priorities with student achievement, staffing, and budgeting. Districts and large charter networks face unique scheduling challenges that go beyond those of individual schools. They must:

• Maintain consistency in academic programming across multiple campuses
• Support both veteran and novice schedulers
• Ensure efficient resource allocation across the network
• Complete schedules early enough to enable network-wide planning
• Balance network-wide priorities with school-level autonomy

Traditional scheduling approaches often fall short in meeting these multiple demands. When schools default to using basic tools like spreadsheets or rely heavily on institutional knowledge, they create risks for both individual campuses and the network as a whole.

Noble Schools operates 17 secondary campuses across Chicago, serving more than 12,000 students. The network faced several challenges with their scheduling process:

• Inconsistent scheduling timelines with limited visibility into scheduling progress across the network: each school was left to its own devices to build their schedule, with limited support
• Heavy reliance on manual processes that were time-intensive: schools relied on crude tools to help such as Google Sheets, white boards, and bulletin paper
• Particularly acute challenges for new schedulers learning the process: new schedulers faced a steep learning curve to gain the institutional knowledge required to build a master schedule, often without any formal training and support
• Ensuring the schedule met the needs of all learners: ensuring programming meets the needs of honors and advanced students, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities was a complex puzzle schools had to solve

Recognizing the need for both technological innovation and tailored support, Noble partnered with Timely. The platform’s ease of use and personalized, one-on-one support empowered schedulers – whether first-time or veteran – to create high-quality schedules with confidence.

The partnership produced significant results across several key metrics:

Efficiency Gains

• Average time savings of 25-50 hours per school
• Earlier completion of schedules, enabling better summer planning and a focus on instruction rather than a last-minute exercise of completing schedules
• Reduced need for manual schedule adjustments

Quality Improvements

• Schools averaged ~96% of students fully scheduled, leaving very little hand scheduling on the back end, which can be a very cumbersome process
• Ability to test different scenarios without massive rework: schedulers were able to work alongside their principals to test unique scenarios – such as increased teacher planning time – to understand benefits and trade-off before finalizing a schedule

Student Access

• Centralized, uniform process across all schools mitigated the risk of inconsistencies unintentionally created through a decentralized process lacking controls
• Ensuring students with the highest needs are prioritized and properly placed into inclusion classes—leading to a dramatic improvement in meeting IEP ratio goals (the ratio of special education students to general education students) across all schools

Strong Support for New Schedulers

• Perfect Net Promoter Score (100) from first-year schedulers on their experience with Timely
• Structured, on-demand support system that mitigates risk of turnover at the scheduling position

Noble Schools’ experience demonstrates how strategic scheduling, enabled by the right technology and support, can transform operations across a charter network. By treating scheduling as a strategic priority rather than just an administrative task, Noble has created more efficient processes that better serve students and staff alike.

The network’s partnership with Timely shows that with the right approach, large school networks can achieve both consistency and excellence in scheduling across multiple campuses. As charter networks nationwide seek solutions for scaling their operations effectively, Noble’s experience offers valuable insights into how strategic scheduling can enable network-wide success.