Imagine being able to build a master school schedule in 30 minutes.

On this episode of Class Disrupted, Paymon Rouhanifard, CEO of , joins Diane Tavenner and Michael Horn to explore how AI-powered optimization is transforming a complex challenge in K–12 education: the master schedule. The conversation touches on the critical role that master schedules play in shaping student experiences, resource allocation and district priorities. Rouhanifard explains how Timely identified a pain point schools face with traditional scheduling methods and applied an AI-driven approach that saves hundreds of hours while enabling systemic change and better use of resources. 

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, this is Diane, and you’re about to listen to an interview that Michael and I had with my friend Paymon Rouhanifard, who is the CEO of Timely, which is a company that’s helping schools figure out how to do their master schedules in a way that’s aligned with their values and what they’re trying to do to support their young people. And I love this interview. I think it’s so fun for us to really talk with someone who deeply understands schools and how they work and the operations of them and what’s going on and who is really trying to add value using AI in a way that feels very concrete and specific. And I just think you’re really going to enjoy Paymon’s thoughtfulness and his deep understanding of education and this really specific application of how AI is being used in education. 

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. It is good to see you. And I’m truly excited for today’s guest, someone we both know pretty well, who has been doing some very interesting work, some of the early innings of which I got to see up close because his company was incubated as part of Workshop Venture Partners, where I’m an advisor. And like Laurence Holt, he’s been on my Substack before, . So I’m excited for this conversation to dive a little bit deeper into what he’s doing and how it interfaces with AI.

Diane Tavenner: I agree, Michael. I’m excited to have Paymon on our podcast. We met when Paymon was leading Camden and I was leading Summit. And it’s interesting because I think fortunately for me at that time it was in a learning space where we met and I did a lot of learning from Paymon and with Paymon, well, I’ll speak for myself. I did a lot of learning and feel really grateful that he’s here with us today. And so let me just tell those who don’t know a little bit about who Paymon is. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Timely, an education technology company that helps schools build better master schedules through AI optimization. Prior to that, he was the co-founder of Propel, which offers tuition free health care job training and is currently the chair of its board of directors. And as I said, he was the superintendent of Camden City Schools in New Jersey, among other roles in public education, from teacher to administrator.

And so Paymon, welcome. We’re so happy to have you here.

Paymon Rouhanifard: It’s really great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Michael Horn: Well, so I’m excited. But let’s levelset with our audience and start at a high level and just help us understand exactly what Timely does and what problem it’s solving for school districts and school systems.

AI-Powered School Scheduling Support

Paymon Rouhanifard: Well, as Diane just mentioned, we help middle and high schools build their master schedule using AI optimization and dedicated support from a team of former educators who have built schedules before and also support with data integration. And I think to really understand our work, you have to understand the importance of the master schedule. And there’s sort of two parts to it. Part one is every school, including elementaries, although they have slightly less complicated schedules, but every school in the country has to build their master schedule every year, typically in the spring for the following fall semester. And it is an incredibly painful exercise at the school level where folks have just historically been using really clunky tools. And then the second part of it is the opportunity for systemic change and the connection to the central office to think about resource allocation more strategically, to think about priorities more strategically. And so there’s sort of those two components to it. But tactically, what we do is we help middle and high schools build their master schedule.

That is a painkiller at the school level. And again, can kind of enable key priorities at the central office.

Diane Tavenner: That’s awesome. Paymon, one of my, I’m going to disclose something weird here. I am like a fanatic about the master schedule. When I used to build the master schedule, I was like a lunatic around it. So I’m actually very nerdy and excited about what you do. And one of my concerns is that most people, when they talk about AI in education, the only image they have in their mind is literally a chatbot, you know, that’s mostly focused on the students or the teachers used in the classroom. And, you know, as Michael and I are shifting our conversation from sort of big picture AI to actual practitioners and the usage of AI in education, I really wanted to talk with you, and I’m glad we’re doing it first, because you’re working on the system of school, if you will, and your instance of AI is not a student directly interfacing with it, but has a massive impact on the student’s experience.

Because literally the master schedule is everything. I don’t think people realize that. It is sort of the infrastructure that controls almost everything. And when you’re in a district and you realize that, you realize all the power is in the master schedule. Right? And so tell you said it’s a pain point for schools, but paint that pain point a little bit more for us. Like, what problem were you setting out to solve for them, yes, it’s, like, laborious and kind of hard. But you know what? How does solving this lead us in a direction that you believe in in schools?

Master Scheduling: The Complex Puzzle

Paymon Rouhanifard: You know, we often say that those who know about master scheduling really know, and Diane, really appreciate that you’ve been in the guts of it in your prior lives. And if you were to ever talk to an assistant principal at a middle or high school and you asked them about the master schedule, like, their eyes will get widened and then they’ll, like, have a lot to say. Typically mostly horror stories about how hard it is and how they lock themselves in a room every spring and don’t leave that room for weeks, and they’re bruised and battered and they have a final master schedule. And so the reason for that is the schedule is just a really complicated puzzle to put together: What courses you’re going to offer. What courses students need to graduate depending upon the graduation trajectory they’re on, what credentials teachers have and what courses they’ll be teaching, what rooms are available, what other constraints in terms of collective bargaining, consecutive periods taught. There’s just course requests — you know, from students might be kind of most fundamental to solving this equation — but it is a lot of different variables. And folks are using tools such as Google Sheets, whiteboards, sticky notes.

We’ve seen giant Magna Tile boards with a lot of our district and charter partners, and we take pictures of them and save them for posterity. And so that’s, again, speaking at the school level, of what a painful exercise it is to put together a really complicated puzzle that is fundamentally a math problem to solve. It’s a mixed integer, linear math problem.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Paymon Rouhanifard: And to your point for the systems level, that’s, I think, where it gets really interesting and I suspect a thread you may want to pull on.

Diane Tavenner: Definitely. Let’s start a little bit with just understanding more. You just said it’s a math problem, which is now we’re getting into AI. I don’t know that everyone realizes that AI is really mathematical in many ways, but help us understand where the AI is in Timely and what, you know, do people in the schools even realize that you’re using AI?

AI Optimization Over Generative AI

Paymon Rouhanifard: Yeah, I would say because of the AI boom that we’re in. A lot of folks understandably believe that we use generative AI, but we don’t. And we use AI optimization technology, which is under the broader banner of AI and machine learning. And so the reason for that and implicit to the question you just asked is large language models being predicated on words are not really good at math. And I think we’ve all seen stories of the large language models struggling with basic math and hallucinating. And we’re solving a really, really complicated math problem. And so we are training off of a local set of data, using AI optimization to do that heavy lifting, to ultimately solve that math problem school by school. And so we don’t use a chatbot, but instead we think about it as a series of inputs in terms of course data, student course requests, staff room information, and then you layer on a number of constraints in terms of, we’re telling the AI optimization engine, “here are the things that we know have to be fixed. This teacher needs a prep in 8th period. This common planning period needs to be at the start of the day,” whatever it may be. There’s a million different examples of that. And once you enter those constraints, you push a button and then it solves that math problem for you.

Diane Tavenner: And I’m assuming it’s also pretty quickly Paymon, because I remember, oh my gosh, back in the day, I mean this would have been in the like early, early 2000s. I mean there was like a, I had a computer program that did this, but literally I could only run it a few times because it would take, you know, sometimes 24 hours literally to run it. I would have to put my stuff in there and then hit a button and then go away for 24 hours and cross my fingers that something would come back. I’ve also done the Post-it Notes on the board too. So like, I don’t, if you haven’t done this, you don’t appreciate how insane this process really is. And oh, by the way, everyone’s mad at you when you’re done because you never did it right.

Paymon Rouhanifard: Yeah, you can’t, you can’t please everyone with the master schedule. And yeah, I mean we obviously like to track a lot of data, outcomes oriented organization. And what we see is on average, folks are spending hundreds of hours, hundreds of hours building that master schedule. And so, you know, there’s a process in terms of onboarding, ingesting data, setting those constraints, and that takes a little bit of time. And then you push the button. And on average we’re talking about, sometimes the schedule is built in 30 minutes, sometimes it takes a couple of hours.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Paymon Rouhanifard: And in the grand scheme of things, you’re saving hundreds of hours. And so at the school level, it really does create that, that sort of time efficiency.

Michael Horn: So I want you to double click a little bit more about why this wasn’t possible previously because you mentioned Google Sheets, Diane mentioned the software program that would take 24 hours to run. We know that there have been a few startups in the master schedule space. You know, maybe a decade ago, I think there were a couple that got funded and stuff like that. What is different about this moment where you could use this AI optimization that wasn’t possible say five, 10 years earlier, that you’re able to take a process that’s hundreds of hours to a 30 minute of output and then I imagine some iteration?

Improving Clunky School Scheduling Tools

Paymon Rouhanifard: Well, I would say there are two things happening here. Certainly the technology, as we all know, has gotten better over time and even in the last two to three years, significantly so. But I would also add that because we are a focused solution and when you think about the status quo and in what ways we’re disrupting people, for the most part they’re using these clunky tools because the solution that they purchase to solve their master schedule is the student information system. For the student information system, the scheduling module is one of many, many different things it does. And so if you talk to any superintendent, assistant superintendent, head of a charter school about their student information system, usually they tell you it’s clunky, it’s hard to use, it’s a necessary evil, it’s the repository of data, it’s the source of truth. And then it has an attendance tracker and a grade book tool and a master scheduler. And what we’ve learned through lived experience. A former superintendent, my co-founder, was a teacher in Boston Public Schools, who’s our chief technology officer.

Pretty much everyone on our team has had school based experience. We know that that status quo has not allowed folks to build schedules that are easy to build and two, are strategic and connect at the systems level. And so it’s about creating a dedicated systemic solution that frankly could have been built sooner. But now with better technology and a more dedicated approach to solving the problem, I think it’s allowed us to gain some traction.

Michael Horn: It’s super interesting. I’d love to hear some stories about districts and charters and how they’re taking advantage of this, how they are allocating resources differently, perhaps to better optimize the use of time and space and the impact you’re seeing and numbers like what you know, how many schools are you serving and what are the sorts of stories that show how they can now rethink use of time, space, resources across the school when they get to play with the master schedule in a way that they hadn’t before.

Paymon Rouhanifard: I’ll start by just saying that when I think about the moment we’re in with AI and connecting it to priority moments of innovation and sort of mass adoption of technology. So I’m thinking about certainly post Covid and adoption of technology across schools in a significant way, the personalized learning movement before that. What you see is a lot of different solutions entering the marketplace. And I would argue that most of those solutions, and this is not a critique, but most of those solutions are at the individual level. They’re used by classroom teachers, used by students. Rarely do they connect across all schools in a systemic way. Rarely do they connect to the central office in a systemic way. And sometimes and oftentimes I should say that is the nature of innovation.

You need to have a very dedicated point solution and really figure that out in the same way that we started. I think what makes scheduling unique is that it’s not just about the painkiller at the school level and helping your AP and your counselor save their summer, basically to get their summer back and not have to be banging their heads against the wall, but because the schedule should reflect your fundamental priorities as a school district. So when you, when you zoom all the way out, 80 to 85% of your budget is your personnel. And the schedule governs how your personnel are interacting with students. And that fundamentally reflects the student and teacher experience, your academics, your budget and your staffing priorities. And so the schedule before Timely was always this black box that was created on a Magna Tile in one school, in a Google sheet in another school, in an Excel spreadsheet in your third school, and so on and so forth. And then they’d use the student information system to kind of do the last mile and put it in and call it a day. But never did the central office get the opportunity to, to connect those dots and to think about what are our district wide priorities academically.

What are our staffing and budget priorities and how can we reflect that in the schedule that again governs 80 to 85% of your budget. And so that’s, I think, what makes Timely really unique. You know, in this moment where we have a lot of point solutions that are serving individuals. In terms of where we are as a company. Michael we started with a really small pilot serving a handful of schools three school years ago. The following year we served about 80. You know, last year we closed around 300. Right now we’re up to a little over 400 schools across 17 states. So we’re still a young organization, but we’ve, we’ve seen a lot of momentum and we’re really grateful for that.

Michael Horn: But I know you got a couple of great case studies. Maybe just give us a couple examples of how schools have used that to allocate resources very differently or things they were surprised by before they looked into it through your tool and then all of a sudden said, holy cow, how can we change this?

Paymon Rouhanifard: I’ll give you two examples, one district and one charter. We worked with a district in West Texas, Lubbock Independent School District, which has about 25,000 students. And like many other urban and rural school districts, it has seen declining enrollment as their special education population and emerging bilingual population has increased in terms of a percentage of the total enrollment. So one way to think about that is overall budget declined, but the needs of students has increased. And so doing more with less is a very common refrain in district lands across the country. And so what Lubbock did, across 14 middle and high schools, through implementing Timely and building a scheduling process alongside us, they identified 37 vacant positions, teaching positions that they were planning to hire for, but realized they didn’t need to hire for them. And the reason for that is they identified staffing inefficiencies through the master schedule. And by the way, I felt this acutely when I was a superintendent, where I walk into one of our high schools and I walk by a class with six students and another one with 33 students.

A lot of variants, a lot of inefficiencies, because that schedule is so hard to build. And you skip a lot of those steps because those steps are just so hard and complicated. And so what Lubbock did was they eliminated those 37 vacant positions and three things that are really important to call out. One, the average class size target was the same as the year before. They didn’t eliminate any course offerings to students. A student choice was not impacted, and three, no teachers were impacted because these are vacancies. So strict inefficiencies that led to bottom line savings. And they took those bottom line savings and reinvested them into new academic priorities.

37 positions in West Texas dollars is about $2.2 million. On the east coast and west coast, it’d probably be close to $4 million. So really meaningful savings. The second example, charter management organization, Noble Schools in Chicago. Seventeen campuses, largest charter management organization in the city of Chicago. They’re solving a different problem. They felt that their staffing model was tight enough, resource allocation was less of a priority for them, but they needed to solve that pain point at the school level.

And in particular, they had a big challenge with directors of operations being trained and supported because there was a lot of burnout. It’s a really hard job. Directors of operations for charters tend to be the equivalent of an assistant principal without academic responsibilities. So they’re in charge of master scheduling and a whole array of other operational tasks. And so for them, they had a lot of new schedulers, new directors of operations, and this allowed them to mitigate that attrition risk and to kind of create a more sustainable role. And I think what was really cool, 11 of the 17 schools had a new director of operation. And those 11 gave us a perfect 10 out of 10 NPS. And so making a job easier, creating greater productivity, and certainly still giving Noble the opportunity to think about resource allocation more strategically, although that just wasn’t as much of a priority for them.

Master Schedule as Innovation

Diane Tavenner: I love those examples because they feel very, very familiar to me. And I think anyone who’s been in that, has had these experiences and would recognize what a big deal it is. You just, what you just said, what a gift you’re giving. And I think in this moment in time where everyone’s kind of enamored with the tech, they forget how hard it is to literally just run schools every day. This massive, complicated operational challenge. And like you said, the master schedule is an expression of your values and what you care about, in so many ways. And so I think what you’re describing, and correct me if I’m wrong, Michael, because this is your area, but is you really built a sustaining innovation? I mean this is an innovation for how we do, you know, do the most important thing that controls what all these people are going to do for a whole year, all day, every day. And so that’s one framework we talk about a lot.

Another thing, a newer one Michael and I are kind of playing with, is this idea that, you know, most of our, well, I would say all of our schools in some way shape or form fit in this, this original kind of industrial model of schools. And we’ve talked for a long time about how to break out of that industrial model. I think some of us are hopeful that with the advent of AGI, we will kind of be able to invent that post industrial model by. I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. I’m wondering how do you think about, how do you, or do you think about that kind of post industrial model, for example, Paymon? Like, you know, I think in that new model we probably don’t conflate time with credit. And so we’re much more probably in a competency based progression. Does Timely move in that direction take us there? Of all, like, how do you, how do you think about the product and its evolution and where it might take us?

Michael Horn: And Paymon, while you gear up for that, I’ll just geek out for one second because I think it’s interesting. It’s a sustaining innovation for a school, but you’re clearly disrupting the landscape of how we schedule today. So it’s like it’s one of those things, right, where you’re doing both depending on the paradigm or framework. You’re looking at it through it, which is fascinating.

Paymon Rouhanifard: Diane I love the question and coming from you, I’m always, I’m always a little circumspect because you study this point, obviously, so do you. Michael and so I’m not sure if I’m going to have anything new to offer that you haven’t already thought through. But I will say what gets me really excited about the work that we do is ultimately we are a tool that can operationalize the hopes and dreams of the district of a charter management organization of an independent school. We don’t have a view as to what their delivery model should look like. We don’t have a view into what their strategic plan should be. If they ask us for advice, we’ll certainly give it to them. But we want to operationalize those hopes and dreams. And so to the extent that they’re innovating and certainly we have a lot of partners that are pushing the envelope, I, I will say, and we can come back to this or we can leave it alone the moment we’re in and not just, not just with AI, but just where districts are and declining enrollment and, and, and a lot of fiscal pressure.

I can’t say I’m seeing as much innovation as we did pre Covid.

Michael Horn: That’s interesting.

Paymon Rouhanifard: You know, having said that, we have partners that are trying to rethink the teaching profession and are trying to give a full day of professional development for teachers, which is not an easy thing to do in the construct of a traditional school district. And we’re a tool that helps operationalize that. We have partners that are thinking about, oh gosh, first year teachers. We see so much attrition and it’s really expensive and it’s really disruptive. How can we in the master schedule build in a set of professional development supports, mentor teacher who has a prep that coincides with the first year teacher to observe and vice versa for that first year teacher to see the mentor teacher and then build in common planning time. That is very intentional for first year. These things are really hard to do using sticky notes and Google sheets. And so we’re helping operationalize where that innovation is happening.

And maybe those are more modest examples of innovation that would, you know, competency based and kind of eliminating seat time. But ultimately Timely is vision agnostic strategy agnostic. And that gets us really excited.

Diane Tavenner: Me too. Because I think that when people build something with a complete point of view, then it’s not… You actually close down innovation. Right. You don’t. You don’t address the problems that exist. You don’t let people really imagine what’s possible and support them in that.

I can’t resist. I got to go back. Why do you think there’s not as much in it? Why are you not seeing as much innovation, what’s happening on the ground? And do you feel like it’s shifting at all?

Paymon Rouhanifard: I’m gonna come back to why I think it’s shifting. I just think in a lot of states. Well, across all states, we all know that the overall enrollment across all school types has been declining over the last five to seven years. And that’s a combination for a lot of factors, but the declining birth rate being a big one, of course. And so that leads to smaller budgets. And in urban and rural quarters in particular, you see a commensurate increase of the percentage of students with an IEP and percentage of students who require multilingual support. And so that fundamentally shifts the mindset of district leaders.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Navigating Fiscal Pressures in Education

Paymon Rouhanifard: And makes it hard to innovate when you’re trying to do more with less, when you’re trying to, at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. And you’re just trying to make ends meet in a lot of ways. And so what we see across the country is how can we address this fiscal pressure by doing the least harm possible. And that certainly opens the door for Timely to be of real support. And we’re incredibly proud of that. And so I think at the same time, when priority number one is we want to avoid teacher layoffs and we want to make sure we deliver resources to the students who need it the most. It’s kind of hard to get to the next series of priorities. And I think that’s just the moment we’re in until things start to level out.

What is exacerbating this is in a lot of states. And you all, I’m sure, know this. I frankly know it probably better than I do the expansion of vouchers and ESAs and kind of additional fiscal pressures on top of the macro shifts that are happening. And so whether you’re in Texas or Louisiana or Florida or Arizona, I mean these, there are a lot of states who are passing, these are innovations in their own right at the state level, but create some fiscal pressure on districts and I think that just again makes innovation hard.

Diane Tavenner: I agree with you certainly in the existing system, which is, yeah, makes me sad. Well…

Paymon Rouhanifard: I’m sorry, I’m sorry I took it there.

Michael Horn: No, let’s switch, let’s switch gears because … 

Diane Tavenner: I don’t know about you, but I, I just spent last week in several schools actually on the east coast, which is, you know, we’ve often talked about this East Coast, West Coast sort of difference. It’s always fun to be, be on the East Coast and notice the similarities and differences. And I’m feeling a little bit more optimistic than I have for the last five years. It has been rough, rough, rough times, as you know, and it does feel like there’s a little bit more, you know, sort of energy back in things. But, that’s totally anecdotal. So what are you optimistic about? You know, what do you see as possible? You know, where, where is the hope going forward?

Paymon Rouhanifard: Well, look, in spite of those macro conditions, you know, we are really fortunate to partner with some incredible organizations who are figuring out how to navigate these conditions. And you know, I think both things can be true, which is it’s a tougher environment to innovate and innovation, what’s that old saying? Necessity is the mother of innovation? I think we’re seeing a lot of interesting work happening across different parts of the country and we’re serving schools coast to coast. And I, and I, and I think the moment we’re in with AI, we’ve seen super, super interesting solutions that we necessarily partner with inside of, inside of districts. And so, you know, whether it’s folks pushing foundational skills, literacy, and building that into the master schedule through block instruction and seeing organizations like Amira and Ello, you know, better serving students whether in school or at home, you know, we’re seeing a lot on those fronts. And we’re seeing, I would say, districts that are thinking much more long term in nature, which frankly is refreshing. I do think that there’s been a little less and I don’t have the data to back this up, but I do see folks who are much more like superintendents tend to churn pretty quickly. But I’ve seen a bit more longevity in those roles. And perhaps that’s because the kind of traditional education reform playbook isn’t being implemented as frequently.

But I think what that means is that folks are kind of more playing the long game and thinking much more intentionally about resource allocation, strategy, academic priorities. So there’s a lot to be hopeful for and we’re delighted to be working with a lot of different district and charter partners in spite of these tough conditions.

Mitigating AI Risks

Michael Horn: Continuity and longevity definitely allows you to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do if you’re sort of thinking about, oh gee, two years and a pile of dust sort of thing. But let me ask this question. You mentioned a couple AI tools in there as well that have you, you know, give you reasons for optimism. I’m curious. Sort of the same premise, but like around what you’re seeing, the conversation is very concerned around AI and how it will have negative impacts. And where do you think that conversation is misplaced or where do you think that conversation is spot on and we ought to be thinking about, you know, AI is a danger, if you will, to education.

Paymon Rouhanifard: Well, look, I think in terms of teacher anxiety that, that I think as far as the teachers who I’ve spoken to who worry AI is going to take our jobs and it’s going to kind of fundamentally change the profession in ways that may not be comfortable, to me, I think that’s misplaced. And you know, I see solutions like Course Mojo, which is a dramatic boon to classroom facilitation and can really empower the teacher to better deliver instruction and to better support students’ holistic needs. So that’s where my head naturally goes in terms of teachers using AI as a copilot and fundamentally being able to deliver instruction in a more effective manner, to differentiate it and really kind of let the content delivery happen in a much more seamless way that puts less pressure on the teacher. I think the flip side of that is we just need to ensure the other part of your question, Michael. We need to ensure that there’s coherence inside of classrooms, across classrooms and across systems. And I think that’s always the challenge with education technology. Going back to kind of earlier waves of adoption of tools. Again, a lot of different point solutions, point solutions are necessary.

Timely is an example of a point solution that has the systematic connection. But when you’re using a lot of disparate point solutions to ensure that there’s an integration and an intentionality of bringing those solutions together. And so I think a lot about core curriculum and do these supplemental tools actually holistically and intentionally integrate with core curriculum, for example? And I think that’s still a real risk that we’re facing.

Diane Tavenner: Well, and just, I can’t, I have to just ask this because I really worry about the technical capabilities of schools and school districts to do the integration of all of these point systems. You pointed out, rightly, Paymon, that you know, the big giant system enterprise system that supposedly does everything, does most things terribly for us and doesn’t meet our needs. And these thoughtful point solutions are more and more especially developed by educators who really understand it much better. But do I have the skill set and the people in a school or a district to integrate all of those things? How, how are you finding the folks you’re working with and their ability to do that?

Paymon Rouhanifard: I think they’re struggling with this and it’s rare to find a district that has intentionally and thoughtfully integrated their ERP with their SIS with their HR data and so on and so forth. And, and frankly what you see is they’re, they’re kind of constantly switching out those systems and bringing in new providers that might be marginally better, but frankly I would argue are kind of do the same thing as before. And so I think it’s a real issue now with AI agents. Could data integration be much more productive and efficient in the future? I’m hopeful. It’s still a little bit early to say, but the guts of the system where those data sets come together to inform decision makers and to allow for these systems level changes, that’s still an ongoing challenge, but I think it just starts with the mindset of really optimizing for, and solving for coherence and thinking about core curriculum and supplemental solutions in a very intentional manner and, and on a parallel track trying to bring those actual data systems together. I’ve seen districts do this. It takes playing the long game and going back to Michael’s point, like maybe we’re not rocking the boat as much as we were before with standard based reform, which is like its own thing and comes with trade offs. But if there’s greater longevity for district leaders, this is an example of something they can actually take on to really bring those systems together and to do the work of building them.

Diane Tavenner: Awesome. You should interrupt me, Michael, because I could talk to Paymon all day.

Michael Horn: I was gonna say. Well, no, I feel like we’re just starting to have a bunch of revelations here, but this has been great. Should we switch to our final segment, Diane?

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, we’ll have to talk.

Michael Horn: Have you back on. That’s the answer.

Paymon Rouhanifard: All right. That’d be fun.

Diane Tavenner: Well, as you know, we every, basically every episode, Michael and I try to turn away from work a little bit. I’m going to fail miserably today and share what we’re reading, watching, listening, and we’d love to invite you to do the same.

Paymon Rouhanifard: So I’m reading two things. I just started reading them and I, and I have to admit, like early stage, kind of founder mode. I’m not making as much time for leisurely reading as I’d like to be, but I guess one book is work related and probably doesn’t even fit the question, but “Predictable Revenue” and it kind of shows you like, in terms of startup mode. I mean, I’m at the foundation business hierarchy there too. The other book I’m reading is “The Lion Women of Tehran,” which is about friendship, two women, but it’s set in Iran, which is where I was born. And in the context of it being from the 1950s and, and into the 80s where there was a lot of political change happening in Iran and our family lived through a lot of that. And so in the 50s, there was a big political tug of war where they took control of oil away from Great Britain. Really sort of charismatic prime minister who led that, which led to an even greater U.S. involvement and then, and then the Islamic revolution in 79. So you kind of understand people’s lives in the story about this friendship as a lot of dramatic changes happening in the country.

Michael Horn: Fun fact, Diane, before you go, the author of that book lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, is that right?

Paymon Rouhanifard: Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Diane Tavenner: Wow. Amazing. Wow. Incredible.

Michael Horn: Over to you, Diane.

Diane Tavenner: Well, thanks for sharing those Paymon. I wrote them down. All of your recs are always good. So here’s an interesting one. I’m going to admit I’m not technically reading this book, but it’s being read in my house and it’s constantly being discussed at family dinner night and it’s called the “Scaling Era.” An oral History of AI 2019-2025 by Dwarkesh Patel with Gavin Leech. And for sort of the insiders in the AI world, Dwarkesh has a podcast that they sort of all listen to. And this is this fascinating book and it’s kind of, it’s beautiful and weird and funky.

It’s like the recordings from the podcast, but they’re reorganized and it’s part like AI encyclopedia and notes guide and, and part story and oral history. It’s really interesting. So you know me, I don’t really read non fiction cover to cover, so it’s like spots and conversations. Pairing that with, I did just finish the last episode of the “Last Invention” podcast, which I’ve already promoted here, but I just say it again because I was only two episodes in when I first mentioned it. I think totally worth it for those who haven’t gone in yet to understand the moment of time we’re living in and kind of what’s going on. I think it’s really well done and valuable and great journalism and yeah, highly recommend.

Michael Horn: And Diane, when you’re not, you know, working on , we’ll have you take our podcast of seven seasons or whatever and create a book out of it as well with all sorts of crazy excerpts. I also failed on the not-related-to-work front. I guess I alluded to this on an earlier show as well. So I’m sort of exactly where you are on this, Diane. But I finished up the founder of the Florida Virtual School, Julie Young, her draft manuscript that is part memoir and part startup story or creation of Florida Virtual School, and then her work at ASU Prep as well. And I’ll say it was, it was quite an energizing read, I know she’s going to have more edits before the book actually is out, but I’m excited for it to be out because I think for people to read it, it’ll be a bit of a breath of fresh air and it’ll cause some grappling with some of the central messages and conclusions that she has. But, I think it’ll be really good for the field to sort of go back, if you will, to the past a little bit and think about a thoughtful use of technology and education and how it looks a little bit differently from from some of our assumptions around that today, I think.

So that’s been on my mind and I will just say, Paymon, this has been a hugely stimulating conversation. I have a couple of pages of notes from this of things that I want to follow up on. So huge thanks for joining us. Huge thanks for the work you’re doing at Timely and for all of you joining us and listening to us as always keep the questions coming. Keep the comments coming. Diane and I have been energized by it and it has led to us choosing our guests from your questions directly and thinking a lot about the comments that you’ve made to us. So huge thanks as always.

And we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.

This episode is sponsored by LearnerStudio.

When Paymon Rouhanifard accepted a seat on the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education three years ago, he thought of it as a “sleepy, wonky” body that didn’t capture many headlines. 

But for the former superintendent of the Camden City School District — who wanted to step away from the public arena after five years leading a district under state control — the post has been far from quiet. The pandemic thrust the state board into the forefront of tricky decisions on school reopening and COVID mitigation measures. 

“Lo and behold, we were in the middle of this whole thing,” he said. 

Rouhanifard was inspired to go into education by the example of his immigrant parents, who fled religious persecution in Iran to come to the U.S. He earned a degree in economics and political science from the University of North Carolina before he joined Teach for America and taught sixth grade in the New York City Public Schools.

After a stint at Goldman Sachs, he held top spots in the New York City and Newark school districts before former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appointed him superintendent in Camden. At the time, it was one of the districts in the state, with declining enrollment and crumbling facilities.

Rouhanifard oversaw the implementation of “renaissance schools.” Unlike charters that might lure families away from the district, the model involved nonprofit charter operators that had to take over existing neighborhood schools and show improvement. The results were . Critics derisively dismissed him as a reformer, but others found him accessible and skilled at navigating the politics of urban school districts.

His post on the Massachusetts state board has further cemented his reputation as an iconoclast.

Rouhanifard cast the last fall when the board voted to start the school year with a statewide mask mandate, and he continues to call out for focusing on rising case counts instead of hospitalization rates, when vaccines have been available for over a year. 

And now, Rouhanifard once again finds himself at the center of a debate over a possible state takeover of a district in turmoil.

The state board is weighing potential receivership of Boston Public Schools following a scathing report of a special education department in “disarray,” ongoing disruptions in transportation and inaccurate data reporting.

“The district has failed to effectively serve its most vulnerable students, carry out basic operational functions, and address systemic barriers to providing an equitable, quality education,” the report said.

Aside from his role on the state board, Rouhanifard is founder and CEO of a nonprofit that allows high school graduates to earn tuition-free college credit while employed in health care. 

In a wide-ranging interview, he discussed his current role, Boston’s crisis and the dangers of COVID “groupthink.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

����Ӱ��: There are some strong, opposing views on how to turn Boston schools around. How are the challenges there different from when you led Camden?

Paymon Rouhanifard: I was shocked by the fact that no one disagreed with the content of that , a review of all that has plagued the Boston Public school system. The mayor herself said, “We’ve long been aware of these issues,” and those who came to push back on any potential intervention from the state said the same thing. 

In Camden, there was a similar . The difference is that in Camden, there was political willingness at the local level to partner with the state. Different people have different views on whether that was the right thing to do. Was it always easy? Did everyone sing “Kumbaya” day in and day out? Absolutely not. 

Ultimately, Boston Public Schools is an institution, an organization of people serving young people and families that’s led by a superintendent. You would have thought that what we’re actually trying to solve is how the state commissioner of education and the mayor can find political allies and build a plan. That’s not what it is. They need a leader. They need a CEO, and we need to all give that person cover to do the really hard work of selecting and building curriculum, steeping teachers in it, improving facilities, righting all of the issues with the special education department.

You can’t do that without leadership. As long as there’s fighting at the political level within Boston and across the state, you will be guaranteed not to find a high-quality leader to come in and do that work. It’s just going to be the same revolving door with someone who’s going to get chewed up and spit out by warring factions.

So you can’t even discuss solutions until that division is resolved?

Exactly. I was lucky because the governor in New Jersey, the commissioner of education, the mayor and other senior political leaders in South Jersey agreed on the premise: We need radical change and we’re going to bring in someone to help us figure it out.

Do you think you could be the next superintendent in Boston?

No, no, no. Superintendent was the best job I ever had that I never want to have again. It seems sort of silly to rule something out a decade from now, but I don’t think I want to be a superintendent again. I feel grateful that I can play a small role on the state board of education here. The work at Propel is currently what matters most to me.

Talk about how Propel is different. With the pandemic causing students to rethink higher education, what have you learned about the transition after high school?

In Camden, we were incredibly proud of the progress that happened inside the four walls of the classroom — improved test scores, graduation rates, reduction in suspension rates and an increase in college-going rates. At the same time, I’ve had this dawning realization that our students have been floundering in life after high school. There’s been a commensurate spike in college stop-outs. Young people are making these decisions with very little support and face a false choice of either having to forestall income and accrue debt or having to forestall education and mobility to go take an entry-level job with limited opportunities for advancement.

Propel aims to create a third way. We call it jobs-first higher education. Young people from historically marginalized communities need a quicker path to economic stability, and traditional higher ed is the wrong fit for just that reason. Why can’t we just have the best of both worlds? Let’s get them into a decent paying job as soon as possible. In six months or less, and with no debt, they’ve got a legitimate amount of college credits in their back pocket if it’s something they want to pursue in the future. They can help grandma if something comes up or if a younger sibling needs them financially for support. These are the issues that ultimately have driven young people out of traditional higher ed.

What does it take to build that infrastructure, and do you see this model working in other industries as well, beyond health care? 

We would like to be in IT, advanced manufacturing. It can apply to all middle skill jobs. It requires employers to participate in this system. It requires higher education to build these credentialing opportunities that stack into … degrees. 

Community colleges, which were designed to be a workforce engine to address the needs of the labor market, have drifted away from that mission. They are mostly in the business of transferring students to traditional liberal arts college degrees, and the workforce side doesn’t interact with the academic side. We are the connective tissue that brings them together.

Is now the time to expand, with more students rethinking whether higher education is for them?

We feel much greater urgency for this work now that you see post-secondary enrollment down by double digit percentages. The good news is wages have gone up, but young people are going to be drawn to a job that requires zero training but pays $18-$19 bucks an hour. In the long run, that may not be in their best interest. That’s a headwind that we face in our own recruitment. A big part of our job is to make it very clear why college credits matter, how will it help them into the future. 

Are you seeing growth? 

We served 120 students last year and we’re close to 250 this year. We’re still a young nonprofit.

Back to your role on the state board, your views on COVID policies have tended to go against the grain when it comes to mask mandates, for example. How did you arrive at those positions? 

There has been a lot of groupthink in how policy decisions are made, and I thought it was particularly true as we were learning more about the pandemic. I, like most everyone else, took the pandemic very seriously. I was scrubbing my groceries, taking all the precautions, and I’m a triple vaccinated person. My eligible son is vaccinated. My daughter is 4. But as more information emerged, it just became increasingly clear to me that one’s position on COVID was reflective of their political ideology, and to me that’s problematic.

I strongly believe that public health has to be founded upon convincing all people of the benefits and the related drawbacks of specific measures. It can’t just be one specific ideology and the tribes that come to agree with you. You have to convince everyone, or at least the majority of people.

Or it’s not public health?

It’s not public health. It’s tribal public health. I started to feel that divergence. There was so much information, particularly in schools in the South that had long been open, many without mask mandates. We could study them and better understand what we should have been doing in blue states like Massachusetts. School reopening was … a far bigger issue … than masking ever was. I’m frankly more disillusioned by the inanity of the masking debate. 

It was in the fall of 2020 that I began to be a bit more vocal about: “What are the off ramps?” “How do we open up schools?” And several months later, “How do we think about removing the mask mandate and making that a local decision?” I saw armies of parents who were feeling the same way, many of whom are left-of-center, as I am. 

This is one of those things where you want to gloat about being right. But many people have come around on this issue and have acknowledged that we should have opened up schools sooner. We’re now dealing with the ramifications of school closures as it relates to young people’s mental health — above and beyond even the learning loss. I lived it firsthand as a parent. My then 5-year-old was really going through it, and he’s a very social kid. That, frankly, was as big a reason for my advocacy as anything.

If you were still a superintendent, do you think you would have taken the same positions? 

I do. The mandates can’t come at a state level. I could have [given] a commissioner of education, a state board of education some cover, to show it is possible at the local level. 

I don’t mind saying this on the record. I was just hurt by the lack of district leadership in the Commonwealth. They were at times silent, at times really on the other side of school reopening. At the crux of it, there was nary a discussion about trade-offs. All public policy is about trade-offs. When you’re focused on one variable, you’re a researcher or you’re an advocate — you’re not a policymaker. 

We’re either trying to get COVID to zero and implement every intervention under the sun, or we’re like Ron DeSantis and openly shouting at people who want to wear a mask. It’s about trade-offs. What are the benefits and drawbacks at this moment in time, given the information we know? It’s about acknowledging what we thought was true a month ago may not be true today, and to say that out loud. Tell your constituents, “I was wrong a month ago. New information has emerged. Here’s where we’re going.” 

It was hard for anybody to say that?

Yeah, because there are political consequences. Decision-making got sucked into the vortex of politics. 

What are your thoughts on the role the media has played in covering the pandemic? Can you point to examples that you think have been helpful and not helpful?

There has been legitimate uncertainty, and that drives a certain set of decisions. It’s not that I think there are these culpable parties who failed us as a country. It’s just that as the pandemic evolved with new information, we failed to act on that information in ways that were beneficial to our constituents. If there is a culprit, I would say local media and to a lesser extent, national media.

It’s a trite thing to say but anxiety-inducing headlines generate clicks. The business side of the media and the journalists haven’t always been aligned. I think Donald Trump in a way put a lot of fuel back into The New York Times and other media publications, but so did COVID. I always imagine the business side [saying], “Can you guys please write about something other than whatever the topic is that doesn’t generate clicks.” And then Trump happened and COVID happened, and they’re like, “Keep writing more of that. Now we’re on the same page.” 

It’s in the Boston Globe’s financial interest to write a story in May of 2022 about case counts surging, having quotes like, “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” and saying hospitalization rates are also surging. When you look at the curve, it’s a small bump, often near-nadir. People respond to that and it does us no favors. 

A surge now doesn’t mean what a surge did in 2020? 

Exactly, because the vaccine has been available for over a year and we’re going to be living with COVID the rest of our lives. By focusing on case counts, we lost the plot altogether because the initial focus was on flattening the curve — the curve being the hospitalization rates. There has been very little curiosity from the press, both regional and national, on what is happening inside of hospitals. There’s a lot of grayness in the data, and one has to actually be thoughtful and nuanced in representing it.