AAI’s Center for Evaluation & Educational Leadership expands school support through business partnerships

LAWRENCE — The goal of the Center for Evaluation & Educational Leadership (CEEL), a center within the Achievement & Assessment Institute (AAI) at the University of Kansas, is to help school district leaders navigate challenges to foster effective, well-balanced learning environments for students. One of the primary ways Director Bart Swartz accomplishes this is through a network of business partners that can help districts with their needs.

In the summer of 2024, Swartz led a professional development course at a conference where he spoke about how businesses could better connect with district leaders. When a few of the businesses reached out to him afterward asking if there would be more professional development opportunities in the future, he realized a partnership with these businesses would benefit CEEL, the businesses and school districts. As a result, Swartz created CEEL Supporters.

“Our business partners allow us to have more supports and opportunities that we can provide to school districts for reasonable prices, and it helps our partners because we can promote them to the schools we work with and offer training,” Swartz said. “Our goal was to make something that was truly beneficial to everybody involved.”

Through its network, CEEL provides business partners with professional development opportunities and connects them to school district leaders. The business partners help fund CEEL and keep costs down for school districts. The school districts receive help from vetted and trusted business experts on different aspects of managing a district.

DCS Services, a general contracting firm in Wichita, is a CEEL business partner that works closely with school districts to offer facility needs assessments, bond planning, budgeting for renovations and more. Taylor Durr, president of DCS Services, said that CEEL’s network has helped them make more connections.

“CEEL is very well connected across the state and in the K-12 market, so when districts need a project done, they call Bart because he's the trusted adviser, and through our relationship over the years, we became a trusted adviser for Bart,” Durr said. “Making a personal connection with Bart has been very beneficial to our business.”

Through the partnership, CEEL and DCS Services helped form a Facilities and Operations Consortium and brought in superintendents and facilities directors at no cost for professional development trainings on managing facilities and planning for bond issues.

Nikki Flinn, a superintendent for USD 298 in Lincoln, took part in one of those courses to learn how to move forward with renovations for her district’s aging buildings.

“I continued conversations with Bart and DCS Services after the training to find out what these renovations would look within our district,” Flinn said. “They helped us host some community meetings and form a facility committee so we could figure out how we could pay for these necessary updates.”

Flinn said that because rural school districts often do not have the same resources and budgets as urban school districts, partnering with CEEL has been useful because of the reduced costs and the wealth of expertise.

“Being able to participate in these trainings and have this network has been great because they have experience and are able to guide you and help you along the way,” Flinn said. “Without these resources, I wouldn’t know how to even begin looking at our facilities and prioritizing things that we need to fix right now.”

School Specialty, an international school supply company based in Wisconsin, is another one of CEEL’s business partners. Heather Smith, a strategic account leader at School Specialty, said that working together with other business partners has allowed them to better serve school districts.

“When we hear that a school district is taking on a project that a CEEL business partner could be a part of, we send that referral to them, and they do the same for us” Smith said. “CEEL has really helped us, and it has been great to collaborate with other businesses.”

Outside of working with the other business partners, Smith said that working with CEEL has given them insight on the different trends going on in the Kansas education world.

“Bart has been able to share some things that are happening at the state level and even at the district level so that we can prepare ourselves to better meet those needs. He has also met with several of my team members personally to help them understand the state and how to interact with different school districts,” Smith said.

As part of the partnership among CEEL, businesses and school districts, CEEL participates in the Greenbush Superintendent Summit, one of the largest gatherings of superintendents in the state. CEEL assists the conference by helping CEEL business partners be sponsors of the event, connect businesses to districts and provide professional learning opportunities.

“You never know where your next opportunity is going to come from, so getting to network at these events has been a wonderful opportunity, and we are thrilled to be part of it,” Durr said.

Swartz said that although it hasn’t been a full year since he began this network of business partners, he thinks it has a lot of potential and is excited to work with more businesses moving forward.

Businesses interested in partnering with CEEL can reach out to Swartz at bartswartz@ku.edu.