We are very excited to announce the launch of BrightBee, a new approach to addressing the staffing crisis in K-12 education.
There is a lot of concern about teacher shortages (rightfully!) but about half of the people who work in schools do other jobs that are also extremely important for student success. They run the front office, they make the schoolyard safe and fun, they help students with special needs, they administer assessments, coordinate after-school programs–and, of course, they also play crucial supporting roles in the classroom.
These workers (usually called ‘classified’ or ‘support’ staff) don’t just do critical jobs, they are a huge part of the climate and culture of the school–and they ground the school in its community. Most support staff live in the neighborhood and many are parents/guardians of students at the school, or attended it themselves.
Our solution is to take a win-win approach. BrightBee helps schools and nonprofits fill support positions by making the jobs more rewarding for workers, which we call “Bees.” Our model is based on:
Flexibility: workers set their own schedules and work when they want to
Variety: workers can do different kinds of jobs each day at different schools
Upskilling: we help workers ‘level up’ to qualify for more types of jobs
Community: our workers feel a sense of belonging and know they are making a difference
We launched a 3 school pilot in October and have already grown to serve over 40 schools across 10 school systems and nonprofit partners in our first 9 months.
A few highlights:
– 2,500+ work assignments completed
– 96% success rate in filling posted assignments
– Average quality rating from schools: 4.4 out of 5 stars
– 96% Bee satisfaction
– $400,000+ in earnings for Bees
– 100% school administrator satisfaction (with 70% ‘very’ satisfied)
What’s next for us? In addition to continuing to expand our ‘Hives’ of workers and the types of positions we cover, we’re also launching a number of new partnerships with schools and nonprofits this fall.
We have a lot of work right now to get the school year off on the right foot in the Bay Area and Detroit, and later this year we’ll start thinking about new communities we can serve.