Christopher HabetlerCoverage Schedule Maker, drawnBack to What I Build

Coverage Schedule Maker

For ops directors. Someone calls out, and the whole day has to be rebuilt before the first bell.

The same small grid, every day, collapsed into one page A line drawing, deliberately small and contained. Left of center, one period grid the size of a hand: a name column, five period columns, eight rows, with a few pencil marks in the cells where someone has reconciled coverage by hand. Then the same grid again, offset a little up and to the right behind it, and again, and again, eight copies receding and fading. Nothing here is large. Then the receding copies slide forward one after another and pass under the front sheet, so the stack becomes one sheet. One thin line leaves the single sheet and runs right into a single printed page. The page carries one heavier short line at the top, the one name, a lighter short line for the date, and eight rows for the day, each with a small period box and a long assignment line. In the right margin, four small marks, each joined to a row by a light leader: a table with four standing strokes, a room with two strokes inside, two seats with the first ticked and an arrow to the second, and three equal tally lines. Last, after the drawing is complete, a hand changes one row on the printed page: a slightly wavy heavier line strikes through one assignment, a caret goes under it, and a written loop goes above it. The hand’s line is the darkest mark on the page. As the hand works, a short light leader leaves the page’s left edge at the struck row and runs left to the one line of text that names the change, so the words sit beside the mark they describe.

Schedule Jenga, every single day.
Thirty minutes of it, before the first bell.

Name who is out and the date, and it prints the sub’s day on one page.

A lunch kept at four adults

Two adults in every ICT room

The building sub first, then the second seat

A ledger that keeps it fair

There’s always a human in the loop.

The same small grid, every day, collapsed into one page A line drawing, stacked top to bottom and deliberately small. At the top, one period grid the size of a hand, with a few pencil marks where coverage was reconciled by hand, and the same grid again behind it, offset up and to the left, seven copies receding and fading. Then the copies slide forward one after another and pass under the front sheet, so the stack becomes one sheet. One thin line runs down from the single sheet into a single printed page in the lower half. The page carries one heavier short line at the top, the one name, a lighter short line for the date, and eight rows for the day. In the left margin, four small marks, each joined to a row by a light leader: a table with four standing strokes, a room with two strokes inside, two seats with the first ticked and an arrow to the second, and three equal tally lines. Last, a hand changes one row on the printed page: a slightly wavy heavier strike through one assignment, a caret under it, a written loop above it. The one line of text that names this change is the last item in the list beneath the drawing and arrives together with the hand’s marks.

  • Schedule Jenga, every single day. Thirty minutes of it, before the first bell.

  • Name who is out and the date, and it prints the sub’s day on one page.

  • A lunch kept at four adults

  • Two adults in every ICT room

  • The building sub first, then the second seat

  • A ledger that keeps it fair

  • There’s always a human in the loop.

Coverage Schedule Maker. The same schedule, rebuilt by hand every morning before six. Now it reads the master schedule the school already keeps and prints the sub’s day on one page, and the ops lead still overrides any line.

One morning, start to finish

The same Wednesday, from the first text at 5:47 to the plan going out at 7:06. Every person, group and number below is invented.

  1. Step 01

    What you start with

    Seven adults out. A text at 5:47, an email, a voicemail, and a note left on the desk the night before. None of it is in one place, and none of it is a schedule yet.

    Before anything can go out, somebody opens the master schedule, finds every block those seven people teach, works out who is free in each one, and keeps co-teaching, the intervention block nobody touches and six adults on the lunch floor in their head while they do it.

    Eight messages arriving between 5:47 and 6:58 on an invented Wednesday, in a list with the time, who sent it and what it said. Below the list, the four things the operations lead then does by hand: open the master schedule, find who is free, remember the rules, write it out before the first bell.

  2. Step 02

    What you type

    Someone calls out. Type or dictate who’s out. One pass, everything you know, in whatever order it reached you.

    It reads the sentence back as chips you can correct, and it keeps what you told it to keep free. A teacher can file their own absence on the same screen, and it goes to the same place.

    The Report an absence screen on an invented morning. One dictated sentence names who is out, who is late, who is away for part of the day and whose meeting to keep free. Underneath, the tool has read it back as seven chips for who is out and one chip for the block kept free, each with an x to correct it.

  3. Step 03

    What comes back

    It builds the whole day’s coverage from very clear, specific 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 also makes coverage fairer, because it spreads the load equally. Every line says who is out, who covers, and why that person and not someone else.

    The Coverage Schedule Maker in the suite look, on an invented morning with seven adults out. The count reads twenty-one of twenty-three class blocks covered, two judgment calls, none open. A red card lays out the one call a person has to make, with two options. Below it a block by block table names who is out, who covers and why, and a ledger shows how many pulls each adult has taken this quarter.

  4. Step 04

    What a person decides

    Anywhere it’s not perfectly clear, you get to choose, and nothing goes out until a person approves it. The computer just made your coverage schedule, and it says it has two places where it wants your judgment.

    You take the two. The first one you settle by moving a meeting. The second one it will not settle for you, because intervention is marked sacred in your own rules and it will not pull from it.

    Two cards on an invented plan. The first is green and already settled: the only free teacher was in a kept-free coaching meeting, and the person moved the meeting so that teacher covers. The second is red and still open: nobody in the building is free for the reading block, with two options and no recommendation. Below them, the two lines of the schedule that changed, and an Approve and send button that has not been pressed.

  5. Step 05

    What goes out

    This is the one thing I need to worry about today on the coverage schedule. Nobody gets the whole plan. Each adult gets their own day, and only what changed on it.

    It went out at 7:06, after a person approved it. Nothing reached a teacher before that.

    One teacher’s view of the same invented morning. A single block is called out: third period, room 214, second adult in a co-taught class, with the note that nothing else on their day moved. A short table lists that block and the two parts of the day that did not change, and a line at the foot says the operations lead sent it at 7:06 after approving it.

How long it takes

Thirty minutes doing schedule Jenga, every single day. Forty-five minutes of cross-referencing on the days it’s bad.

On the other side: thirty seconds or so to type it in, a minute maybe to make some judgment calls, a couple of minutes to make sure this is right.

Setting up the logic takes about two hours, once. The rules are yours after that, and you change them yourself.

Built on two schools’ real master schedules.

This is the work. If your mornings look like this one, that’s a thirty minute conversation.

Book a 30 minute call (opens in a new tab)Or write me at chris@habetlerconsulting.com.