This is a great question that has a lot of answers. I know, I know, that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but it’s the truth and y’all know I’d never lie to you! In all honesty, because there are so many people within the administration and management of a school district, there are many different budgets. So even within the same district, every school has their own budget and every district department has their own budget. And so there's a lot of decision makers who decide how to spend the money because budgets are situated in many different places.

So, when it comes to consulting contracts, you need to be crystal clear in who your target client is, and then you can trace it back to determine who would be the official decision maker. 

For example, let say your target client is principals in years 1-3 and in large urban school districts serving predominantly black and brown communities. Now notice that I didn’t just say principals. I didn’t even just say principals in years 1-3. I included a bit of the demographic factors as well to hone in on your target client even more. In this instance, you could approach the principal directly, because the principal is in charge of their own school budget, which means that they’ll most likely be the one making decisions signing off on contracts.

You could also be approaching this at the district level. There's likely someone in the professional learning department who is responsible for the professional learning of all principals within the district, and they have a budget. 

So even though there's a lot of people who make decisions around budgets, you need to have the utmost clarity around who your target client is. With that information, you can find an entry point. I also want to note that, oftentimes when you're going to a district contact, you’re negotiating or in conversations about a contract serving multiple schools. So if you're talking about one of the large school districts in the country, that's a lot of schools versus if you're talking about a smaller rural school district, it might be like five, six schools.

That quantitative difference is something you want to be cognizant of when you’re looking into getting contracts with school districts. Especially if you are just starting out in your business because in reality, you may not have the capacity to handle a project for a large school district quite yet. 

For example, I worked in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, we had over 150 schools within the district. If you had a contract with the district, you could potentially be serving 150 schools and that's a lot especially for someone just starting out. For a contract with that district as a whole, you’d need a team of consultants to help execute on that contract so many folks grow into that. That's usually not the entry point for most folks. For most folks, the entry point is at the school level. 

That’s why I always remind people to think about school level entry points instead of district entry points. There’s a great opportunity at the school level, because every principal is making decisions around their budget. They’re making decisions right now, and they're making them throughout the entire year, so don't think you’ve missed out on an opportunity if a certain holiday or self-imposed deadline passes. Every principal is a decision maker in terms of how they're spending funds.

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