Twenty-two years in public education, fifteen as a school administrator with the last five as superintendent. Led a 2,500-student district. Roughly 450 employees, a $32.8M operating budget, and over $77M in capital projects during my tenure. The job ran the full surface of the role: board cycles, teacher contracts, community engagement, crisis communication, academic and operational leadership.
The playbook started because I realized what educational leaders deal with, and I developed workflows that I wished I had when I was serving in the role. Weekend evenings rebuilding documents that should have existed already. Board meetings where I needed a policy section and had nothing but a 600-page PDF and a running clock. Weekly staff updates where the writing was fine but the assembly was what took all afternoon. That work is real, the inputs exist, but the missing piece is the structure that turns those inputs into finished outputs without you carrying it all in your head. Once I saw what Claude could actually do with a proper setup, I realized nobody was building this specifically for school leaders. So I did.
If the playbook gets you moving and you want someone to build the rest with you, that is what Willow Run Group does. The engagement starts with a short audit where we map what your daily and weekly workflows actually look like. From there it becomes either a Core System build focused on a specific problem, or a Flagship engagement that rearchitects a whole operations layer around your district's real constraints. No proprietary software to license, no subscription to renew. You own what we build and it keeps running after we leave.
