About Round Rock ISD
Texas | 56 schools | 47,000 students | 3,500 teachers | 96.2% graduation rate
Key results
- $4 million identified in potential savings without staff reductions or negative impact on students
- Up to 256 additional hours of literacy instruction per student annually identified through schedule optimization at elementary level
- Instructional disparities identified and addressed across campuses, with some students receiving up to 90 more daily minutes of literacy instruction than peers, enabling improved resource allocation at Strategic Support Campuses
The challenge: competing for talent while maximizing student success
Dr. Hafedh Azaiez became Superintendent of Round Rock Independent School District during a period of significant change in public education. Located in the northern suburbs of Austin, Texas, Round Rock ISD has long been recognized as a destination district. But in 2021, the district faced challenges familiar to school systems nationwide: declining enrollment, teacher burnout, and persistent funding constraints.
Azaiez focused on maintaining the district’s reputation while addressing a critical priority: ensuring high-quality teachers in every classroom. That meant offering competitive salaries to recruit and retain talented educators. But without additional funding, finding those resources required a hard look at how the district was already allocating time and staff across its 56 campuses.
“We must compensate our teachers better and we must be competitive not just with other districts, but other industries,” Azaiez said. “In Round Rock, we are surrounded by a booming tech sector and realized we were losing teachers to Google, Dell and Apple.”
The solution wasn’t just about finding more money—it was about using existing resources more strategically. Round Rock ISD partnered with Abl (a BetterLesson company) to analyze campus schedules and understand exactly how school resources were being utilized. The Integrated Insights solution examines time, courses, enrollment, attendance, and staff data to reveal current conditions, identify inefficiencies, and connect resource allocation to student outcomes.
Abl became part of BetterLesson in early 2025, expanding our K-12 solutions through groundbreaking academic scheduling analytics and optimization tools.
Learn more about Integrated InsightsUncovering hidden instructional disparities
The analysis revealed significant findings: disparities in instructional time, inefficiencies in staff allocation, and a potential $4 million in savings without staff reductions or adversely impacting students. The results provided a roadmap for improving student performance while redirecting resources to teacher compensation.
Yes, we need support from our state and federal leaders to invest in education. But if we're asking them to do that, we, as school leaders, must also ensure we are spending our current resources as efficiently as possible and putting our dollars where they have the most impact.
Dr. Hafedh Azaiez, SuperintendentThe approach: looking beyond traditional staffing studies
Staffing studies are common in school districts, but Azaiez’s goals extended beyond finding savings. He wanted to improve student outcomes while identifying resources that could be redirected to teacher salaries.
“We were looking for efficiency, but also for consistency and meeting the needs of all learners,” Azaiez said. “How do instructional minutes compare from school-to-school, or even from class-to-class at the elementary level? And how does that affect student outcomes?”
Azaiez found the results significant.
“We uncovered instructional disparities we would have never known about otherwise,” Azaiez said. “And now we can take action to address them.”
Guillaume Gendre, Head of Innovation and Design at BetterLesson, said that’s a common reaction from district and campus staff, who are often surprised at the findings, which include both quantitative and qualitative analysis.
“We ask not only ‘Are we efficient with resources?’ but also ‘Are those resources alignd to produce better teaching and learning?'” Gendre said. “Are we meeting the needs of all students by allocating resources in ways that support every learner?”
It was eye-opening, not just for administrators but for teachers as well. Examining our schedules not just on paper, but in practice, focused our attention on how teachers' time was actually spent and how much was focused on instruction.
Dr. Zac Oldham, Area Superintendent for the Westwood Learning CommunityKey findings
Staff allocation affects student outcomes
The analysis identified that two of the district’s highest-performing elementary schools allocated the highest percentage of their total campus positions to certified teachers (62% and 66%). Meanwhile, two struggling campuses allocated the lowest percentage of positions to certified teachers (50% and 48%).
The analysis also revealed that time distribution between instruction, support, and functional duties varied widely from campus to campus. At schools where teachers performed a greater percentage of support and functional duties, literacy and math minutes were reduced. That variation has a significant impact on students, especially when compounded over the school year.
Literacy instruction minutes vary significantly
The Round Rock ISD elementary school with the highest number of literacy minutes provided 140 in one day, while the school with the lowest provided only 50 minutes of daily literacy instruction. Over the course of a year, that’s a 256-hour difference—or 46 days of additional instruction one group of fourth graders received compared to another in the same district.
Classroom-level disparities within the same building
The analysis goes deeper, drilling down to the student and teacher level, showing that on the same campus two students could have vastly different experiences. By examining individual classroom schedules and determining how much time each teacher spends on recess, transitions, and other functional duties compared to instruction, the analysis found that one student would receive as much as 57 hours more literacy instruction and 42 hours more math instruction over the course of the year than a student in a class across the hall—yet both are expected to master the same standards.
Repurposing resources at high schools
Round Rock ISD leaders evaluated staff allocation at the secondary level to determine if it matches the district’s goals for teaching and learning. The analysis identified differences across the district’s five comprehensive high schools in instructional time, course offerings, class size, and more, with some secondary teachers carrying a much lower student load than others.
“The difference in instructional minutes just jumped out at us,” Oldham said. “Since the pandemic, we’ve asked our educators to take on so many roles. In the daily grind it can be hard to keep up with all there is to do in a day. This analysis gave us an important look at how we’re spending our time and reminds us that we owe it to our students to be strategic in using our resources in a way that benefits them the most.”
The district recently identified “Strategic Support Campuses,” and the data not only confirmed that the right campuses had been identified but also outlined exactly where additional support should be targeted.
The district’s plan includes additional stipends and compensation to recruit and retain talented teachers at those campuses and replicate best practices throughout.
High school scheduling reveals $1M in potential savings
Gendre identified $1 million in potential savings based on increasing seat utilization at the high school level. Round Rock ISD historically allocated funding by applying a student-to-teacher ratio of 26-1, which assumed a full schedule for each student. But when BetterLesson studied actual course requests and transcripts, they found that the actual average class size was 24–the equivalent of $1M in hidden costs that could be recovered by increasing seat utilization.
Additional savings can be realized by adjustments to the high school schedule, which currently includes flex time that isn’t always leveraged for improving academic outcomes, and by ensuring teachers have comparable student loads.
The biggest takeaway was how we've structured high school schedules. We could save approximately $4 million without having a negative impact on students. This analysis showed that we are over-staffing and not getting the most from our resources.
Dennis Covington, Chief Financial OfficerAzaiez said any savings will go directly to teachers and increase teacher retention in Round Rock ISD.
“Most districts across the nation are facing budget deficits. Inflation is rising and costs are going higher and higher, but our allocation from the state remains the same,” Azaiez said. “We must be strategic to find avenues to increase the salaries of our teachers, and that’s exactly where the savings we’ve identified will go.”
Moving forward: investing in teachers and students
Covington said he’s shared information about Integrated Insights with many former colleagues and peers across the country, emphasizing its dual goal of maximizing both resources and student outcomes.
“We are using this to create some non-negotiables for our campuses that stay consistent in the amount of instructional minutes students are receiving,” Covington said. “Connecting the resources with how students are performing academically is powerful.”
The depth of analysis is something that most school districts—maybe none—have the expertise to carry out on their own. This journey has shown us how we can be more efficient and improve outcomes for students. And we will leverage every single dollar saved to incentivize our teachers to stay in the profession they love.
Dennis Covington, Chief Financial Officer
Discover how BetterLesson’s Integrated Insights can help your district conduct a comprehensive analysis similar to Round Rock ISD’s—identifying opportunities for using limited resources more efficiently while maximizing instructional impact.
BetterLesson is the leading provider of data-driven, system-wide K-12 teaching and learning solutions. States and districts partner with BetterLesson to align resources to postsecondary outcomes, build leadership capacity, and implement high-quality curriculum and instructional practices.
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