For Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Crystal Hill, leading 185 schools and 141,000 students, success means providing deep support for a staff that now sees 60 percent of its teachers coming from a non-traditional background. The district, a pioneer in piloting Opportunity Culture® team teaching models and in quickly scaling up to many more schools, posted dramatic learning growth results in 2024–24. What has it taken to get there, and how will the district try to sustain those results? Dr. Hill shares her thoughts with host Sharon Kebschull Barrett and Public Impact® Co-President Bryan Hassel.
Public Impact
How today’s superintendents are building engines of community
From District Administration, by Matt Zalaznick, February 10, 2026
Retaining high-quality teachers strengthens the community inside the district, says Dr. Stephanie D. Howard, superintendent of Texas’ Midland Independent School District. In her experience in a smaller district, reducing class size was not the answer to driving student achievement. When she took the helm at Midland in 2023, the district was struggling with inexperienced educators and substitute-filled classrooms. To tackle retention and student achievement, Howard focused on Midland’s partially implemented “Opportunity Culture” model. The approach extends the reach of highly effective teachers and embeds coaching within small, empowered teams.
Education Department embraces team-based staffing in new guidance
From K-12 Dive, Anna Merod, February 9, 2026
The Education Department’s push for strategic staffing models, particularly team-based instruction, comes as these newer kinds of solutions to improve teacher recruitment and retention are gaining traction in districts nationwide.
Public Impact, a for-profit organization that has created a similar team-based staffing approach known as Opportunity Culture, saw over 1,000 schools implementing or planning to use its staffing designs in 2024-25. More than 90% of those schools are eligible for Title I funds.
Opportunity Culture also announced in February that 25 additional school systems will use its staffing model in 2026 through state funding in New Mexico and North Carolina as well as private funding in Oklahoma.
February 2026 Newsletter: What Retained Teachers in 3 Schools
A record number of school systems will begin using Opportunity Culture® staffing designs this year, with 25 systems across New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oklahoma joining the Opportunity Culture in 2026® initiative—read more about this exciting news in our latest newsletter. Plus we shine a spotlight on Carlsbad Municipal School to reveal how district leaders, principals, and MCL™ teams supported changes that led to state-leading growth. All that, plus news, upcoming events, and tools to use now in our February 2026 newsletter!
Record Number of School Systems to Begin Using Opportunity Culture® Staffing Design
February 3, 2026, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—With state funding in New Mexico and North Carolina and private funding in Oklahoma, 25 school systems will join the national Opportunity Culture® initiative in 2026, extending the reach of excellent teaching to more students, for more pay, within regular budgets. The initiative’s designs have boosted student learning and reduced vacancies nationally.
In Oklahoma, applications are being accepted now for 16 school systems to receive support for innovative staffing redesign and professional learning for educators in new roles. Up to eight systems will begin planning their redesign, using proven Opportunity Culture models that fit district priorities, as early as February to implement in the 2026–27 school year, and the remainder will design this fall. The Oklahoma Public School Resource Center is conducting extensive outreach to school districts and charter networks statewide to encourage them to apply to Public Impact, founder of the Opportunity Culture initiative. Public Impact anticipates collaborating with many partner organizations to mesh this work with ongoing efforts in the state. A private philanthropy is funding the design work as well as an evaluation of the effect on student learning and teacher vacancies in Oklahoma.
In New Mexico, state leaders appropriated three years of funding for innovative staffing redesign to increase educator satisfaction and student learning. The Opportunity Culture initiative received the contract to support up to seven school systems in planning their redesigns. That includes Carlsbad Municipal Schools, which in 2023 became the first New Mexico system to use these models in three schools, leading to reduced teacher vacancies and increased student learning; the models will be in use in all its traditional schools by the 2026–27 school year. The state is also rolling out high-quality instructional materials and methods in some of the same schools, and funding will support evaluation of all sites’ outcomes.
In North Carolina, the Alamance-Burlington and Mooresville districts received state advanced teaching roles grants to plan their Opportunity Culture designs, joining 25 other districts, and more than 300 schools, already using the designs in the state. This grant program, now part of the state’s recurring budget, was created after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) worked with Public Impact to become the first in the nation to use the designs in 2013–14. Its initial pilot was funded by local philanthropists and the district’s own investment. The state grant program has enjoyed consistent bipartisan support, increased pay for thousands of educators, and achieved strong schoolwide learning results overall.
Nationally, Public Impact expects more systems to join in 2026, and several other states are considering similar efforts.
Welcome to the Opportunity Culture® Portal
This short video offers a virtual tour of our online platform for supporting school design and professional learning for educators, with visits to the Design, Learn, Monitor and Tools rooms. Learn more about the portal here.
December 2025 Newsletter: How Teaching Teams Mesh for Success
In two new podcasts, hear superintendents from Carlsbad, New Mexico, and Madison Parish, Louisiana speak about how Opportunity Culture® staffing designs have led to state-leading student growth. In a new video, watch Carlsbad teaching team members as they support one another to drive student success. Plus catch the latest news on certification, upcoming events, and tools to use now. Read the December 2025 newsletter here!
Carlsbad Connections: How Teaching Teams Mesh for Success
In this video, MCL™ team members share how MCL™, MTRT, and RA™ roles support one another to drive student success, with their schools in Carlsbad, New Mexico, posting state-leading math and literacy results this year.
For Louisiana District, HQIM + Opportunity Culture® Teams Sparks Early Wins
When Charlie Butler returned to his hometown to become superintendent of the Madison Parish School District in northeastern Louisiana, he was looking for innovative ways to help the persistently low-performing system. With help from a state “instructional coherence cohort,” the district combined the support of Opportunity Culture® teaching teams with a focus on the implementation of high-quality instructional materials to address longstanding issues—and quickly started to see successes for both students and educators. In this podcast, district and state leaders describe how they worked together to make it happen.
Big changes in Ector County ISD: Resident teachers are getting paid-here’s why
From Your Basin, by Ric Dorsey, November 18, 2025
Opportunity Culture is a program that solves the teacher shortage and improves student performance through the collaboration of advanced educators partnering with teacher residents. They can grow as educators, get paid for their residency, and improve the quality of the curriculum they are teaching.
One principal at an Ector County elementary school says their students’ success is always the number one priority.
“Opportunity culture is a redesign of the traditional school setting. Where you have these excellent, talented, successful teachers that coach, support, and plan with their peer teachers, our goal is that kids get that high-quality instruction every day”
Teachers report that the sense of community and collaboration has helped them grow as educators.