TEP's 5 key areas of savings are as follows:

1. TEP does not employ Assistant Principals or Supervisors other than the school Principal. Typically, Assistant Principals (a) serve as instructional supervisors and (b) perform a variety of administrative tasks. The instructional leadership role of Assistant Principals no longer makes sense in an environment where every teacher has the high-level qualifications and expertise required of TEP teachers. Moreover, the structure of collaboration built into TEP’s instructional model ensures that TEP teachers are heavily invested in monitoring one another. TEP’s teacher-centered organizational philosophy runs counter to the more traditional top-down model in which numerous administrators are focused on monitoring teachers, who presumably have less pedagogical expertise.

2. TEP does not incur professional development fees required to pay teachers or to purchase professional development materials or services. TEP’s Professional Development model is not a separately funded add-on to the teacher’s working life (e.g. a series of half-day workshops conducted by an outside expert or a district administrator). Instead, every TEP teacher’s work-day, work-year (including the Summer Development Institute), and career arc are, in-and-of themselves, a fully integrated professional development structure.

3. TEP does not contract out Instructional Services to educational consultants or other organizations. TEP believes that since teaching is any school’s core competency, outsourcing certain instructional services will, in the long-run, be less cost-effective and educationally sound than investing in TEP teachers to provide these same services. One example of this approach is the fact that TEP does not contract with an Educational Staffing Service to provide the school with substitute teachers (as do many Charter Schools) but instead utilizes TEP teaching staff to substitute for an absent teacher (except in rare cases such as long-term illness). Because of its substantial investment in teacher compensation, TEP is able to incorporate the “substitute” function into its teachers' schedules and expectations (without incurring “overtime” costs typically incurred by schools that use regular teachers to “cover” for absences). In addition to minimizing TEP’s costs, this approach solves an educational quality problem since substitutes typically do not provide students with instruction that is comparable in quality to that provided by full-time teachers. At TEP, to ensure that learning is maximized, “substitute” periods are devoted to the subject of the TEP covering teacher. For example, if the 5th grade Social Studies teacher is absent, his or her four periods of instruction are covered by four other 5th grade teachers such as the Math, English, Science and Music teachers; on that day each of the four 5th grade classes would get an “extra” period of either Math, English, Science or Music.

4. TEP does not employ a variety of administrative and support staff such as an attendance coordinator, a parent coordinator, or a discipline dean; instead each TEP teacher leads one whole-school process, program or project. For example, there are 4 Attendance & Home Visit Directors, 2 Parent & Community Involvement Coordinators, and 4 Deans of Student Discipline & Incentives. By structuring time for this school-wide leadership into its teachers’ work days, TEP aims to empower teachers to build supportive organizational structures that foster an integrated and sustainable relationship between TEP and a student and his or her family. Instead of navigating a variety of specialized school personnel – teachers, an attendance coordinator, a parent coordinator, assistant principals etc. – a student and her family form meaningful relationships with that student’s teachers. Conversely, whole school service roles contribute to each teacher’s understating of student’s school life, family life, and the interplay between the two.

5. TEP does not incur any extra personnel costs for extended-day and other student activities, since these are led and staffed by TEP teachers. After the academic portion of the school day ends, each TEP teacher leads an extended-day activity for students. As extra-curricular activities provide students with out-of-classroom opportunities that are essential to their growth, it is vital that teachers “see” and work with students in out-of-classroom contexts. The TEP teacher-led extended-day program runs from 4 to 5 PM, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.