Christopher Habetler Book a quick call (opens in a new tab)
Christopher Habetler Habetler Consulting · Brooklyn, NY

For principals, ops directors and network leaders

Do Less.Do More.

Give me a few minutes of your time and I’ll give you back a few hours of your week every week. (…and that’s just the start.)

We’re taking some of the time-consuming tasks off your plate so you can do the transformative work that only you can do.

Three people call out, one is leaving early, and one just called you with a flat tire, and there is a network PD you forgot about. It’s 6:40 in the morning, and everyone is looking to you for the plan.

Difficult? No. Hassle? Yes. Must it be done, and done correctly? Of course.

Worth your time? Absolutely not.

What used to take you or your team 30 minutes can now take 30 seconds. See the schedule builder

Book a quick call (opens in a new tab) Take the three-minute scorecard Free. What the busywork is costing you, in school days a year.

Nearly 50 schools and networks, every one of them a referral, and 91% came back the next year.

  • Achievement First
  • Uncommon Schools
  • Collegiate Academies
  • DREAM
  • PAVE
  • Coney Island Prep
Christopher Habetler
Twenty years turning around and scaling schools, and building the systems and the leaders that run them. Two years deep in AI.
The same school leader, six tools One person standing upright in six frames. In the first five the tool in their hands changes: a paper gradebook, a ditto machine, a spreadsheet on a monitor, a student information system on a laptop, a data dashboard on a tablet. In the sixth, labeled AI, the same person stands with empty hands, the work already done.

You have already lived through five of these. AI is the sixth, and it’s the closest thing to a time machine I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Never student records. Always a human in the loop. If you have an AI policy or a FERPA agreement, that tells me what anything I build has to meet.

What Tuesday Looks Like

Before

You do coverage by hand before anybody else is in the building, the staff email is four drafts in and still not right, and the walkthrough notes are still in your notebook. You get to the real work at 4pm, if you get to it.

After

Coverage is done before you take your coat off. The staff email went out at 7:15, in your voice. The walkthrough patterns are already named for Thursday’s PD. Tuesday, you sit with the teacher you have been meaning to get to.

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What I Build

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Unsure where to start with AI, and a little stressed that you’re already behind? Used right, it puts your brain on the biggest problems. I build these tools, install them, and hand them off so they run without me.

Coverage Schedule Maker For Ops Directors

Does the schedule Jenga in thirty seconds, not thirty minutes. Someone calls out. Type or dictate who’s out, and it builds the whole day’s coverage from rules you set up and can change. Co-teaching, intervention that’s sacred, six people on the floor for lunch, the person you never want to pull, no one teaching too many in a row.

It runs the same logic every morning and it tracks fairness, so the load spreads evenly instead of landing on whoever is easiest to ask. The high-stakes calls it hands back to you. Anywhere it isn’t perfectly clear you choose, and nothing goes out until a person approves it. It runs entirely in your Google Docs, and you don’t need an AI account to make it run.

The first one started over coffee with an ops director. Smart, incredibly hardworking, didn’t know where to start with AI, and didn’t trust it. I realized how much time she was spending on this. I went home and made it. We went back and forth, getting her logic right, troubleshooting, refining.

Line drawing. A daily paper cut of absences and blocks, resolved into one schedule, ending on a human hand changing one row.

Learn more about the Coverage Schedule Maker

Individualized Data Reports For Academic Leaders and Principal Managers

Takes schoolwide data and makes individualized reports somebody can act on, and tracks progress over time.

Line drawing. A mountain of spreadsheet rows on the left, one line that wanders and dies, and on the right the four questions a teacher could suddenly answer.

Learn more about Individualized Data Reports

Academic Health Coach Live, and Free to Try

Talks you through your own data and the next move. Paste in what your data shows. It walks you through the read, then coaches the conversation you need to have, with one teacher, a grade-level team, or your own routine, and ends on a one-week action plan with owners.

What’s in there is the judgment I’d bring to that conversation. A principal gets the read in one question instead of digging for it in a spreadsheet.

Line drawing. A principal’s question meets a short fork of choices, and the path ends on the one move that changes the answer.

Learn more about the Academic Health Coach Open the app (opens in a new tab)

Everything Else I’ve Built

Find your job, and open the tool you’d actually use.

Ops

  • Transportation ManagerOps directors and transportation leads

    Routing, family communication and driver coverage in one place.

  • Enrollment and RetentionEnrollment leads and COOs

    Shows where families are falling out of the funnel, by campus and by grade, against last year.

  • Vendor Evaluation ToolCOOs and anyone who signs the contract

    A cost-benefit read and a diligence report on any vendor, in minutes.

  • Development and Grants TrackerDevelopment teams

    Every deadline, what each funder is owed, and where a request is sitting right now.

Principals and Deans

  • Chief of StaffPrincipals and network leaders

    Everything you owe, what matters today, and what somebody outside is waiting on.

  • Communications EnginePrincipals, deans and APs

    Writes what you’ve been putting off, in your voice.

  • Meeting SuiteAnyone who runs the week in meetings

    Agendas, next steps, invites and the follow-up email, from a few keystrokes.

  • Weekly Staff Update BuilderAnyone who sends the all-staff note

    Interviews you once, then builds the all-staff note in that format every week.

  • Ask The HandbookAnyone tired of hearing “I didn’t know”

    Your own handbook answers the question. No more asking the person next to you.

  • Attendance SuiteDeans and attendance teams

    Who you flagged against who you actually reached. It never scores a child.

Teaching and Learning

  • Walkthrough CoachingPrincipals and principal managers

    Reads your low-inference notes and finds the patterns in the school.

  • PD Planning and Production AssistantAnyone who runs PD for adults

    Talk through the agenda, and it builds the outline and the branded deck with the speaker notes in it.

Future Builds

Currently building. Schedule Rebuilder, Campus Coaching Themes, People Pages, Hiring Season, School Culture Builder, Run It Through the Rubric, Long-Term Planning, and New Hire Onboarding. Ask me about any of them.

A hundred other things a tool can do
  • Building the deck for Wednesday’s PD.
  • Writing the weekly team email, four drafts in, still not right.
  • From your coaching tracker to the PD. The questions you’re getting, the trends, and the work that matters most for the grade team or department.
  • Campus coordination. Email to calendar to the daily, weekly and monthly look-ahead.
  • Evaluating products, tools, curriculum and other purchases. Due diligence, and investigating impact.
  • Budget exceptions. Finance reading a whole export to find the few lines that moved.
  • Meeting commitments. Turning meeting notes into who owes what by when.
  • Handbook conflicts. Reconciling family handbooks, staff handbooks and board policy across campuses.
  • Weekly PD build. Session plan, materials and deck, every week.
  • Coverage on your other campuses. The same tool, set up on each campus’s own master schedule.
  • One morning brief for every campus. Who’s out and whether they’re covered, which buses are late, and each campus’s attendance total.
  • Bus coverage when a driver is out. Which routes to combine or who covers, and a person approves it before anything changes. It works from routes, rider counts and the driver roster.
  • A reading plan to-do list. The required actions, owners, deadlines and evidence in one place. It tracks the tasks and never reads a score.
  • Your AI policy. If you have one, it tells me what anything I build has to meet. If it’s still in progress, I can help you adapt a model policy.

Use one of these, or point me at a new one.

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The People Who Back This

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100% of my clients were referrals. Year over year, 91% came back.

Nearly 50client organizations
100+multi-year engagements
15+states
200+leaders trained through multi-year cohorts

Where I did it

KIPP Foundation
Achievement First
Excel Academy
United Schools Network
PAVE
DREAM
Uncommon Schools
UVA Darden
NYC Public Schools, PS 333 and JHS 123
LA Unified
Harvard GSE
Collegiate Academies
Blackstone Valley Prep
Teach For America
Citizen Schools
Explore Schools
Coney Island Prep
Brooklyn Prospect
Kauffman Schools
RePublic Schools
ASU Prep South Phoenix
KIPP Jacksonville
New Orleans College Prep
KIPP Nashville
Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School
Amandla Charter School
Elan Academy
Holyoke Public Schools
Alma del Mar Charter Schools
EastSide Charter School
Kuumba Academy Charter School
Prestige Academy
Santa Fe Public Schools
West Denver Prep

The Record

Jerel Bryant
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

Doug McCurry
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

Tom Kaiser
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

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Start

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Tell me what you’re up against and what you’re thinking. I’ll give you a place to start and a path we can walk together.

Book a quick call (opens in a new tab)

If you don’t love it you don’t owe me anything. Worst case you are out a quick call, and you keep the tool either way. If it breaks, I’m on call and I fix it that day.

Or write me: chris@habetlerconsulting.com · 617-913-8366 · or take the three-minute scorecard.

How We Start · done for you, done with you, done without me.