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Coverage Schedule Maker

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.

With Coverage Schedule Maker, we do it faster and better. It reads the master schedule the school already keeps and builds the plan in under two minutes, down from about 20, and each adult gets their own day on their phone, with what changed at the top. The ops lead still overrides any line.

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One Morning, Start to Finish

You can click through this one yourself (opens in a new tab). It runs on a made-up school with made-up data. For one morning start to finish, open Help and press Take the tour.

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.
About twenty minutes of it, before the first bell.

Name who is out and the date, and each adult gets their own day on their phone.

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. About twenty minutes of it, before the first bell.

  • Name who is out and the date, and each adult gets their own day on their phone.

  • 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, drawn. Somebody rebuilds the same schedule by hand every morning before six, and now the tool reads the master schedule the school already keeps and builds the plan, and each adult gets their own day on their phone. The ops lead still overrides any line.

  1. Step 01

    What You Start With

    On a Thursday, five adults are out: two are at a PD all day, two are out all day, and one is leaving at 1:00. 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 five people teach, works out who is free in each one, and keeps co-teaching, the intervention block nobody touches and four adults on the lunch floor in their head while they do it.

    The coverage tool at a sample middle school on Thursday, October 15. Under Who Is Out, with Type or dictate chosen, one typed sentence: Dubois and Jaramillo at PD all day, Whitaker and Kearney out all day, Bellamy leaving at 1. A Read it button sits below it.

  2. Step 02

    What You Type

    Someone calls out, and you type or dictate who’s out in one pass, everything you know, in whatever order it reached you.

    It reads the sentence back line by line, with the words each line came from, so you can correct it, and it keeps what you told it to keep free. Nothing is added until you say so.

    What I read: the typed sentence read back as five lines, one per adult, each with the words it came from. Dubois (Gr 7) and Jaramillo (Gr 8) are out all day at a PD, Whitaker (Gr 6) and Kearney (Gr 8) are out all day, and Bellamy (Gr 6) leaves at 1:00. A button reads Add these 5, and nothing is added until it is pressed.

  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, four adults 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.

    Recommended coverage for the same Thursday, one row per block: the time and period, who is out and their class, the adult assigned to cover with how many times they have covered this week and this year and a Change link, what that adult was supposed to be doing, and a short reason such as Free then; can stay longest, with a Why? link.

  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 one place where it wants your judgment.

    It lays out the choice: ask one of three adults who could cover, or call the sub pool. You pick, and the plan follows.

    Choices to Make, with one choice waiting: Whitaker’s class from 12:20 to 1:00, when nobody is free. Option 1, marked Suggested, asks Delacroix to cover from reading intervention; option 2 asks Albright; option 3 asks AP Mwangi; option 4 calls the sub pool and leaves the class open until a sub says yes.

  5. Step 05

    What Goes Out

    This is the one thing you have to decide today. Nobody gets the whole plan. Each adult gets their own day, with what changed at the top.

    Delacroix’s phone on the same Thursday at Atlantic Avenue. Under What changed: you are covering Whitaker’s class, 12:20 to 2:00, in place of reading intervention and prep. Below it, Your day lists each block in order, with the changed blocks marked Covering.

How Long It Takes

About twenty minutes doing schedule Jenga, every single day.

On the other side, under two minutes: thirty seconds or so to type it in, and a minute maybe to make some judgment calls.

Setting up the logic takes about two hours, once. The rules are yours after that, and you change them yourself. This isn’t AI. AI helped with the creation of it, but then it’s a Google script.

If your mornings look like this one, give me thirty minutes and we’ll talk it through.

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