After 15 years as a public school teacher, guidance counselor, administrator, and coach at Westerville City Schools in central Ohio, Mike identified a critical need and set out to improve the way students are placed and scheduled. He began by partnering with school reform agencies and provided consulting services to over 900 schools in 45 states on how to use performance data and implement procedures that would enable better instruction. Districts such as New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Nashville, and Hawaii adopted Mike’s methodologies, which are still in use today.
After five years of hands-on research and development of processes, Mike enlisted Gene Lawhun to build the first version of ScheduleSMART software. Today, ScheduleSMART is the leading software for schools to create student-centered schedules with modern elements of teacher collaboration and automation built in.