# Syllabus

## Course purpose

The Mini MBA for Educational Leaders helps a school psychologist who leads a
special education cooperative serving five public school districts build the
business and organizational knowledge required for the role. The course assumes
deep education expertise and no formal background in accounting, contracting,
operations, or general management.

## Primary outcomes

By the end of 12 weeks, the learner should be better able to:

- read and explain an organizational budget and basic financial statements;
- forecast staffing and operating expense and analyze variances;
- read district service agreements and identify terms needing professional review;
- prepare for negotiations and stakeholder conversations;
- hire, onboard, manage, delegate to, and evaluate professional staff;
- map, improve, and document recurring processes;
- set priorities and build a practical one-page strategy;
- run effective meetings and deliver concise executive briefings;
- identify organizational risks, clarify governance, and plan continuity; and
- operate a simple executive dashboard and 90-day implementation cadence.

## Format and time

Each week contains three to four required public YouTube videos totaling about
two to three hours. The lesson, worksheet, assignment, and reflection require
about 90 to 120 additional minutes. The worksheet is part of the assignment,
not a separate additional block. Typical weekly time is four to five hours.

## Learning sequence

1. **Running an Organization and Thinking Like an Executive.** The director is responsible not only for excellent special education practice but also for the health of an organization shared by five districts. Executive thinking means seeing the whole system, deciding what only the director should decide, and creating enough clarity that others can act without waiting for her.
2. **Financial Statements and Core Accounting Concepts.** A cooperative can deliver strong services and still face trouble if leaders cannot explain where resources came from, what obligations exist, or why cash and the reported operating result differ. Financial literacy lets the director ask better questions without pretending to be the accountant.
3. **Budgeting, Forecasting, and Variance Analysis.** An adopted budget is a plan made with assumptions. A forecast updates those assumptions as vacancies, benefit rates, caseloads, mileage, contractor usage, and district demand change. Variance analysis turns the differences into management decisions.
4. **School District Contracts and Contract Risk.** A service agreement converts relationships and expectations into enforceable obligations. The director does not need to practice law, but she must be able to summarize the deal, notice ambiguity, identify operational consequences, and route material exposure to qualified reviewers.
5. **Negotiation and Stakeholder Management.** Most cooperative negotiations occur inside continuing public relationships. The goal is not to defeat a district; it is to solve a shared problem with clear authority, credible data, and an agreement the cooperative can actually deliver.
6. **Managing and Developing Professional Staff.** Credentialed professionals need clear outcomes, sound supervision, appropriate autonomy, and useful feedback. A cooperative also competes for scarce specialists, so hiring and onboarding must be structured enough to be fair, predictive, and repeatable.
7. **Delegation, Accountability, and Difficult Conversations.** A cooperative cannot scale if every judgment returns to the director. Delegation succeeds when outcomes, boundaries, resources, checkpoints, and escalation are clear. Accountability then becomes a predictable management practice, not a surprise confrontation.
8. **Operations, Process Mapping, and Continuous Improvement.** As the cooperative grows, informal memory stops being a reliable operating system. Process mapping makes handoffs, delays, rework, decision points, and safeguards visible so the organization can improve without losing professional judgment.
9. **Strategy, Prioritization, and Decision-Making.** A cooperative cannot pursue every worthwhile improvement at once. Strategy converts mission and constraints into a small set of choices, measures, initiatives, and explicit non-priorities.
10. **Meetings, Communication, and Executive Presence.** The director’s work moves through conversations, meetings, briefings, and written decisions. Executive presence is not performance or polish; it is the ability to create clarity, steadiness, and credible next steps for different audiences.
11. **Risk Management, Governance, and Organizational Resilience.** Risk management is how the cooperative protects service continuity, public trust, people, information, finances, and compliance while still making decisions. Governance clarifies who oversees which risks; resilience prepares the organization to continue through disruption.
12. **Capstone: Building an Operating System for the Cooperative.** The course’s tools become valuable when they operate as one management system. The capstone connects purpose, structure, money, people, contracts, meetings, measures, strategy, and risk into a 90-day implementation plan.

## Evidence of learning

There are no quizzes or grades. Each week produces a practical artifact:
stakeholder and decision maps; financial analysis; a forecast; a contract review;
a negotiation brief; a hiring and onboarding packet; a delegation system; a
process map and SOP; a strategy; meeting and briefing tools; a risk and continuity
packet; and the final operating plan.

## Adaptation to public education

Private-business concepts require adjustment:

- A cooperative exists to deliver a public educational purpose, not distribute profit.
- A balanced result, adequate reserves, fair cost allocation, service quality,
  compliance, and long-term capacity may matter more than a commercial margin.
- Governmental and nonprofit reports may use fund balance, net position, modified
  accrual, encumbrances, and restricted resources differently from businesses.
- District agreements operate within public authority, policy, procurement,
  records, privacy, employment, and governance requirements.
- Students and families are beneficiaries and rights-holders; treating them only
  as customers would omit essential ethical and legal obligations.

## Contract and professional-review disclaimer

The course teaches the learner to summarize agreements, identify ambiguity,
connect clauses to operations, and formulate questions. It is educational
material and not legal advice. Real contracts involving substantial financial
exposure, indemnification, insurance, employment, student privacy, regulatory
compliance, data security, or unusual liability should receive review from
qualified counsel and, where appropriate, finance, insurance, privacy, technology,
HR, and governance professionals.

## Information-safety rule

Do not upload personally identifiable student information, protected student records, confidential personnel information, unredacted contracts, credentials, or sensitive financial information to an AI system without explicit authorization. Follow FERPA, IDEA, district policy, employment-confidentiality duties, contractual restrictions, records rules, and approved data-security procedures.

Use fictional, aggregated, de-identified, or expressly authorized information
for coursework. Store completed work only in systems approved for the sensitivity
of the underlying information.

## Completion standard

Complete the required videos, worksheet, and assignment for all 12 weeks; note at
least one real organizational action each week; and present a coherent capstone
operating plan with a feasible 90-day implementation sequence.