Transformation Challenge Kickoff with East Central Educational Service Center
East Central Educational Service Center, Mapt Solution’s 2024 Transformation Challenge winner, is a small organization with a big audience. ECESC provides services and support to 14 counties, 42 organizations, 4,521 teachers and 67,478 students in east central Indiana (whew!). ECESC’s efforts to elevate student learning and improve student outcomes include securing and managing grants, cooperative purchasing to increase cost savings, building school community capacity and offering a wide variety of professional development opportunities.
ECESC has been on an exciting journey over the past five years as key grant opportunities and a passionate, focused team have allowed it to grow its staff, expand its programming and examine new opportunities to support member districts. There’s a feeling that the team is standing at the precipice of change – excited to dig deeper, poised to push outside their comfort zone and ready to amplify their impact. Throughout the Transformation Challenge journey, Mapt will collaborate with ECESC to assess the current education landscape, develop a clear plan for capitalizing on the organization’s strengths and opportunities, and establish a supporting implementation roadmap.
With the school year winding down and an all-too-short summer ahead, May was the perfect time to kick off our partnership with a tour of ECESC’s new facility in New Castle. The organization recently moved into a former elementary school, allowing access to larger spaces for events, classes and professional development opportunities.
We immersed ourselves in learning about ECESC’s current state and the ways it provides critical support to its member districts and schools, including shared resources, procurement and purchasing support, group insurance, professional development and more. The scaling opportunities ECESC provides are immensely valuable – for example, sharing services like insurance allows districts to access support at a reduced cost. ECESC also provides channels for school staff to connect across districts, including virtual affinity groups where staff with similar jobs can share learnings, ask questions and offer support to their peers.
Looking ahead, there's exciting work happening around career exploration and learning pathways. ECESC is examining the ways it can best support member districts as the job market in Indiana and the east central region shifts to meet current needs and priorities.
ECESC plans to launch a new career development experience this fall using the RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional) framework for identifying interests. The program will bring greater, more meaningful and engaging career exploration opportunities to students across the ECESC service area.
During our visit, the ECESC staff shared with us the changes they have witnessed in the past few years, the plans they have primed for the 2024-2025 academic year and their goals for the years to come. It’s clear the ECESC team is incredibly passionate and committed to their work and to the region’s students. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and the chance to deepen our understanding of ECESC’s unique challenges and goals.
Next up – we’ve initiated landscape research, evaluating similar educational service centers to identify best practices and areas for enhancement. We’re also actively preparing to engage key internal and external stakeholders to gather insight and feedback across the broad spectrum of individuals served.
Stay tuned for next steps in the Transformation Challenge journey!