Give me a problem, I’ll make you a solution.
Unsure where to start with AI, and a little stressed that you’re already behind? Most of the leaders I talk to feel that way. Like you, I’ve been in schools a long time, always looking for a better way to do the work. There are options now that we didn’t have two years ago. That doesn’t mean the old way was wrong. It just means there’s more on the table. Fifteen years in schools, two years deep in AI. Let me help you get on the other side of it.
Give me 30 minutes, I’ll give you three hours back a week, every week.That is one tool, built on your screen and running by the following Monday, for work or for yourself. Then we go find the next three hours.
We built an organization culture that aligned to our mission by working with Chris. He built the capacity of our leadership team, created the systems and tools, and showed us what REAL change management looks like.
Kinnari Patel-Smyth · President, KIPP Foundation
Book a 30 minute call (opens in a new tab) Free, and useful either way.
Are you still spending hours on this?
- Building the deck for Wednesday’s PD.
- Writing the weekly team email, four drafts in, still not right.
- Rebuilding the daily coverage schedule from scratch, before most people are awake.
- Waiting on academic data that sits in a spreadsheet until somebody has four hours.
Or wake up at 3am sure you have forgotten something?
None of that needed a person. Ten custom tools so far, built for school leaders, ops directors, principal managers and academic teams. By my count they hand back more than 100 hours a week across the people using them. Some examples:
Individualized Data Reports For Academic Leaders And Principal Managers
Puts the ninth grade data in front of the people who can act on it, every Tuesday. Doing it by hand each cycle would have run six to eight hours a week, which is why nobody did.
Coverage Schedule Maker For Ops Directors
Builds the day’s sub coverage in seconds instead of an hour. She was wary of AI, which I understood, and I built her the tool anyway. Somewhere between two and four hours of her week came back, and she is asking what else can work this way.
In her hands now, a couple of iterations short of running itself.
Communications Engine For Principals, Deans And APs
Writes the email you’ve been putting off, in your voice. Paste your own draft and it will tell you where it will cost you trust.
Meeting Suite For Anyone Who Runs The Week In Meetings
Agendas, next steps, calendar invites, auto reminders and follow-up emails, in minutes, from a few keystrokes.
In build now.
Ask The Handbook For Anyone Tired Of Hearing “I Didn’t Know”
Answers any policy question straight out of your own handbook. What is the phone policy in the cafeteria. Who covers a callout after 7am. What are we supposed to say to a parent about the new grading rule.
Scoped and priced per school. Ask me what it would take.
Academic Health Coach Live, And Free To Try
Talks a principal through their own data and the next move.
See A Real One The Ninth Grade Build, Start To Finish
Systems changed schools. This is version two.
Version one asked more of people than people had hours for, which is why the binder is on a shelf by October. We aren’t outsourcing the hard work. We are easing the burden of the grunt work, so the systems you already believe in finally run.
Time back
Point this at the work that never needed a person: the pulls, the formatting, the first drafts, the weekly report nobody wants to build.
Ten percent of your week is more than 250 hours a year.
The risk: nothing student-facing, nothing that makes a decision, nothing that leaves the systems you already control. If it breaks, somebody does it the old way for a week.
Systems
The manuals, the operating guides, the review cycles. What turns a decision made in August into what actually happens on a Tuesday in February.
Yours to keep: written down, handed off, running without me.
Expert Thought Partner
The part only a person can do: what to do next, which of these three problems is actually one problem, whether the leader in front of you is struggling or simply in the wrong seat.
How It Works
Take the three-minute scorecard, or write me the problem in a sentence. Either way I see where your week is going before we talk.
What I’d build first, what I wouldn’t touch, and what I think it’s costing you in school days. No call needed. You mark it up. If you write “looks right, thanks,” we’re done, and you keep the read.
Forty-five minutes, on your screen, in your account, from your own drafts and public information. Never student records. It runs the following week.
You use it, you break it, I fix it. Then I hand it off, written down, so it keeps running without me. The next one is your call.
The worst case, in full: 75 minutes of your time, the call and the build. You keep the tool either way.
Take the three-minute scorecard Under three minutes, no email gate. Or name the problem and I’ll send the read.
At KIPP, the data systems my team built turned network data into the answers leaders acted on. That year 46% of ninth graders across all 48 KIPP high schools finished Q3 at a 3.0 GPA or better, up 6 points year over year.
91% of my clients came back the next year, and the growth was all referral.
Where I did it
Uncommon Schools · NYC Public Schools, PS 333 and JHS 123 · LA Unified · Harvard GSE · UVA Darden · Collegiate Academies · Blackstone Valley Prep · Teach For America · Citizen Schools · Explore Schools · Coney Island Prep · Brooklyn Prospect · RePublic Schools · KIPP Jacksonville · KIPP Nashville · Kauffman Schools · ASU Prep South Phoenix · New Orleans College Prep · Amandla Charter School · Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School · Elan Academy · Holyoke Public Schools
The work with Chris deeply accelerated the trajectory of my school, and ultimately the network at large. It was nothing short of transformational, and I do not use that word lightly.
Jerel Bryant · CEO, Collegiate Academies · Louisiana State Principal of the Year
Our school leaders name his coaching and support as having very high impact, and they push hard to get as many ‘Chris days’ at their schools as possible. I would highly recommend Chris to any school, CMO, or district looking to make dramatic improvements.
Doug McCurry · Co-Founder, Achievement First
Chris spent two days with us, but his impression has left a mark for years. In minutes he could identify the root causes of culture breakdowns, and equally important, tools and strategies to dramatically and immediately change them. He is always there for us, to talk, share, empathize and then help me make tough decisions.
Rachel Yanof · Founder, ASU Prep South Phoenix
Chris’s monthly visits were a catalyst for dramatic growth. On our network’s evaluation system, we went from the lowest-performing middle school to the highest-performing in the history of our network. Truly, Chris was no small part of that.
Tom Kaiser · Founder, Authentic Leaders · former Principal, Achievement First Endeavor MS
Seven More, Verbatim
Amy D’Angelo · Executive Director, Connecticut, Achievement First
I’ve been struck not only by Chris’ unique skill in execution with students, but also by his ability to strategically think through building and improving school systems.
Kendra Engels · Vice President of Program, Achieve Twin Cities
He asked the right questions to get me to take a hard look at my practice and to make small shifts that made a big difference.
Stu Warshawer · Principal, Harriton High School · founding Principal, KIPP Camden
Chris not only helped us calibrate our bar for what excellence looks like in the classroom, but helped us create clear systems to achieve it.
Jeremy Abarno · Founder, Jeremy Abarno Consulting · former Principal, PAVE Academy
Chris is a keen listener and an insightful observer and has used his experience and skills to tailor his consulting and leadership development services to fit our school’s needs.
Chris Bostock · then Managing Director of High Schools, KIPP New Orleans
Rather than a cookie-cutter approach, Chris instinctively pushed us to become clear about what our community truly valued.
Chi Tschang · then Regional Superintendent, Achievement First
Chris Habetler is one of the nation’s leading experts in building high-performing schools.
Max Milliken · then Dean of Students, Achievement First East New York Middle
Chris has an extremely high bar for what middle school scholars are capable of and he is incredibly talented at communicating this vision to other adults.
I’ve been on all three sides of this market.
I advise investors and education companies on the K-12 buying decision: who actually decides, what a school will renew, and why a product that demos beautifully in June is dead by March.
Four levels, four different sets of incentives, and most of what goes wrong in K-12 edtech happens in the gaps between them.
- Mid-level leaders
- Deans, coaches, grade-level leads. The daily user, and whether the tool gets opened in the spring.
- School leaders
- The discretionary buyer, and the person whose departure churns the account.
- Regional leaders
- Standardization pressure, and where school autonomy gets overruled.
- Charter CMO executives
- The enterprise contract, the procurement bar, the renewal decision.
I built one. I built DeansList and we grew it from 0 to 275 schools; it’s now in 1,000+, though I’m no longer affiliated with the company.
Then I bought them. At the KIPP Foundation I ran the $10M+ EdTech vendor portfolio, including the national ACT/SAT evaluation across 48 high schools, where we ran structured interviews and elimination rounds on efficacy and pricing and took 15 vendors down to 8 approved.
And I still do the work they are supposed to serve. Fifteen years of it, which is why I can tell you what a school will do with one.
Diligence and expert-network calls, category and market reads, go-to-market and pricing for education companies, and advisory retainers. Sessions run 30 to 60 minutes and I take them on short notice.
Book an advisory or diligence call (opens in a new tab) Or write me: chris@habetlerconsulting.com
You don’t have time to figure out AI, and you probably can’t afford to keep putting it off either.
I know that’s not a fun place to be.
Tell me what you’re up against. If I can help, I’ll say how I’d start. If I can’t, I’ll say that too.
Book a 30 minute call (opens in a new tab) Or write me: chris@habetlerconsulting.com · 617-913-8366
Not ready for a call? Two other ways in. Take the three-minute scorecard and I’ll show you what the busywork is costing you, in school days a year. Or name the problem here and I’ll tell you what I’d do first.