This year, Clark County School District in Las Vegas started the year in a pinch: district-wide, there were over 600 teaching vacancies and student enrollment continued to grow. In response, the district pulled out all the stops to recruit new teachers (see ads in airline magazines and a zip-lining superintendent) and is now rethinking how to deploy existing staff.

Taking lessons from Public Impact's Opportunity Culture program as well as other school districts and charter management organizations, Clark County is piloting two staffing models in which effective teachers take responsibility for an expanded group of students. They've launched a pilot program that includes a blended learning model and a "teaching and learning model" in which excellent teachers are responsible for their own classrooms as well as leading other teachers. Clark County School District is applying the same principle to their principals. Next year, two excellent principals will be leading two schools each in an effort to "franchise" their approach to leadership.

We expect that there will be tweaks to the models for both teachers and principals, but we applaud the Clark County School District's effort to take risks, try new ideas and learn from other systems. Watch this space in the coming months to see what we can learn from them.