DPS believes deeply that those who are closest to students – the teachers, parents, leaders and school community members – are best positioned to make decisions about how to serve students and should have strong ownership of all that happens within their buildings – encouraging innovation, flexibility and differentiation.

The Portfolio Management Team develops systems and authorizing processes to encourage innovation, flexibility and differentiation among DPS’s family of schools.

How we empower our schools

• School Model Differentiation: the flexibility to be a different type of school and/or organize with other schools to meet diverse student and community needs (including district-run nnovation, IMO, iZone or Charter).
• Student-Based Budgeting (SBB): a flexibility afforded to the entire family of schools where funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis to each school and school leaders determine how to spend the funds.
• Universal Flexibility: flexibilities afforded to our district-run traditional and district-run innovation schools to select the appropriate curriculum, curriculum-aligned professional learning, assessments, and small group instruction to fit the needs of their student population.