How Dickinson High School uses Securly Flex to tutor all 3,810 students during the school day, no bus ride required.

Challenge

When the bus leaves, the opportunity leaves with it

Dickinson High School is the only high school in a district that stretches across five Texas cities and roughly 30 square miles. Ninety buses cycle through campus every day, and for most students the ride home is long. Some live 25 minutes away.

When the final bell rings, those students are headed home, no matter how many teachers are willing to stay back for extra tutoring. The school had tried to close that gap before Flex: a mega lunch period with open movement, a tutorial block run on spreadsheets, an alternating blue-day/white-day schedule with loose structure. None of it stuck.

“Before, it was a hot mess. Too much freedom, an hour to go wherever you want. Our place was too big, it wasn’t safe. And the spreadsheets were not sustainable for a campus of 3,800 students.” — Courtney

Dickinson had teachers willing to intervene and students who needed the help. The missing piece was a way to connect the two during the school day, at scale, without the whole thing falling apart.

From the classroom

One teacher, every student she’s worried about, in one place

For Delaina, a first-year chemistry teacher at Dickinson, Flex changed how she reaches students who are falling behind.

“If certain students are falling behind, I can find out quickly, go on my computer, log into Flex, type in their name, and draft them for the following day. I can schedule different activities: chemistry tutoring Monday through Thursday, astronomy on Friday. I can have a block specifically for test retaking, or a small group for something they’re not understanding. Everything is right there. I can see where they’re supposed to be.” — Delaina

The priority system protects instructional time as much as it directs it.

“When I’m drafting them, I can see if they’ve already been drafted elsewhere. If that has priority, I can’t pull them, which is convenient because I know if they’re actually going to make it or not. But being a chemistry teacher, a core class, I have priority over other classes. So if I need to steal a student, I can do it.” — Delaina

And the students rarely push back.

“They’re never upset about it because they have to be somewhere, it’s only 25 minutes. A lot of times they see Flex directly improving their grades. That’s more so just about being personal with them and trying to show them it’s for their success, getting them to buy in, which is honestly the hardest part of being a teacher.” — Delaina

Advice for other schools

What Dickinson would tell a campus starting out

“The training piece was a big deal. We had to say why we’re going to do it and why it’s important. A lot of staff development. I cannot say that enough. Training videos, step-by-step, teachers leading PD on how they made it effective. Patience and positive reinforcement: we highlighted all the teachers doing it really well. I had a first-year teacher that used it so well we had her speak at a faculty meeting about it.” — Courtney

“Start the year with a general block and let students sign up. As the year goes on and you learn to take data, have more detailed lessons posted and be more specific. ‘This is a retesting block,’ so kids know they can’t come in unless they’re retesting. ‘This is going to be a lesson. If you’re going to be in here, you’re going to be engaged.’ Draft students based on their specific needs.” — Delaina