Celebrating Office of Operations Achievements

Aug. 9, 2023

Dear Team DPS,

I hope you are all having an amazing summer and have had an opportunity to take some time for self-care. I am currently a little over 6 months in my role as COO and I am super excited, committed, and honored to support you all in this new capacity. The Office of Operations has amazing leaders and teams that work diligently to provide a Safe and Welcoming environment and to ensure the Student, Adult, and System experience supports our DPS mission.

Who we are: The Office of Operations is comprised of Strategic Operations, Department of Technology Services, Enterprise Management, Planning, Design, and Construction, Facility Management, Transportation Services, SLA/Business Services, and Climate and Safety. The Office of Operations employs over 1,575 employee leaders and our services touch each and every employee throughout the District. Our partnerships reach inside DPS and out to include the Denver Police Department, Denver Water, Denver Health, Xcel Energy, City and County of Denver, Parks and Recreation, RTD, Council of Greater City Schools, and many many more.

What We Do: We are committed to providing excellent service to enable students, teachers and families to focus on learning.

Although there have been many successes and accomplishments, I would like to highlight a few and provide a special FUN FACT. This is a great way for you to challenge some fellow co-workers and celebrate one of our DPS core values, FUN!

Accomplishments/Celebrations

Strategic Operations:

Charter Renewal & Innovation Review: received board approval for recommendations on 21 charter school renewals and facilitated the innovation plan review process for over 45 innovation schools.
School Vitals: developed data dashboard in collaboration with the Office of Schools, allowing district and school staff to drill into various data elements, including attendance, discipline, and academic outcomes.
Program Management Office (PMO): successfully closed out several projects this year, including Healthy Start Times, AYS Phase 2, Sharepoint transition, Universal Pre-K launch, and ESS Strategic Planning.
Unified Measurement Calendar: successfully migrated away from the traditional assessment calendar to a more comprehensive data collection calendar, while eliminating a number of surveys in the coming year.

SLA/Business Operations:

Through identification of Service Level Agreements, established key indicators for operational performance and use of data to drive decision-making and customer service strategies.
Met and developed core relationships with school leaders and liaisons to provide valuable feedback aimed at continuously improving Ops and School relationships and giving valuable feedback to the SLA process.

Planning, Design and Construction:

Successfully wrapping up delivering on year 3 of the 4-year $795M bond.
Indoor Air Quality: CDPHE provided free portable HEPA air cleaners – Over 84 schools are taking advantage of the State HEPA program that provides portable air cleaners.
There are 175 projects currently in process this Summer 2023 including several major projects: Reimagining Montbello Renovation and Build, DMLK gym expansion, and 17 of 24 air-conditioning projects will be up and running this year.

Transportation:

Finalized the 23/24 SY Healthy Start Bell times.
Redesigned radio dispatch area into a customer service center (CSC) which will promote more focus on customer service, timeliness, and efficiency.
On-time scheduling project – Worked this year on a cloud-based solution for Routing software to provide better features and link to the GPS system to give on-time reporting and live visual prompts for our over 220 routes.
Three electric buses within Transportation with grant opportunity for 20 busses over the next five years.

Facility Management:

Facility safety incidents decreased by 31% with 36 injuries reported this year. This equates to a 78% reduction over the last 12 years.
Facility Operations reduced vacancies by 35% and revitalized the student sweeper program at over 35 schools.
Hosted two high school student interns in the electrical department.
Completed six outdoor classroom projects to date with 14 more in process.

Enterprise Management:

Hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Glenbrook Greenhouse; the greenhouse will provide fresh, local produce for DPS students.
For the 2022/23 school year (thru June 30), harvested 4080 pounds of produce from the greenhouse.
Successfully passed a 5-year CDE audit of meal operations without any findings or adverse fiscal action through a very rigorous review process.
Successfully passed a 3-year CDE audit of summer meals operation without findings or adverse fiscal action.

Climate and Safety:

Hired new Safety Chief Greg Cazzell.
Decreased turnover from 32% last year to 29% this year.
Training/Drills – Administered over 50 hours of training and performed nearly 400 emergency management drills throughout the school year.
Crossing Guards Program Expansion – Expanded the crossing guard program from 45 to 55 (+22%) guards this year, and are on track to have 60 guards next school year.

Department of Technology:

WiFi Refresh – updating all wireless access points throughout DPS.
Data Modernization – DPS is partnering with Education Analytics (EA) to implement a cloud base data warehouse infrastructure system for our student core information and assessment data.
Ops Survey Award – DoTS continues to lead the customer survey results.
Chromebook Hardware expansion with student interns (Hired five across all of DoTS with a Student Intern Coordinator).

Challenge your co-worker FUN FACTS

Last year, DPS used 2,606.14 miles of paper towels. We used 30,061.13 miles of toilet paper and 11,283.09 gallons of hand soap. We also used 6,790 gallons of floor finish in preparation for the school start.

Thank you all Team DPS. Together, we will continue to focus on getting better at getting better.

Sincerely,

Trena A. Marsal
Chief of Operations
Denver Public Schools