School choice isn’t going away. The districts that thrive Will be the ones that lean in.

For many K-12 leaders, universal school choice feels like something happening to them. Enrollment is shifting and families now have options. The competition is real, and the pressure to respond has never been higher. 

But what if the districts that come out ahead aren't the ones that fight hardest against school choice — but the ones that use it as a catalyst to become undeniably better? 

That's the mindset we heard from Dr. Shanna Johnston, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Kristina Houlihan, Deputy Chief of Government Relations and Communications, at the School District of Lee County, Florida, when we sat down with them recently. Their message was clear, practical, and grounded in results: the districts that will thrive in this era aren't waiting for the dust to settle. They're building something that lasts.

The starting point: 575 vacancies and a bold decision.

In the spring of 2025, Lee County — the 27th largest school district in the nation, serving approximately 100,000 students with nearly 75% qualifying as economically disadvantaged — was facing a crisis. They had 575 advertised teacher vacancies heading into the new school year.

That number was the tipping point.

"We knew that if we didn't act boldly, we would fail the very students we're here to serve," Dr. Johnston said. "That urgency, that moral obligation, that's why Project Believe had to happen."

Project Believe was Lee County's district-wide strategic initiative to get from 575 vacancies to zero by the first day of school on August 11, 2025. Most people thought it was impossible.

They did it anyway.

Lever one: Staffing as an operational overhaul.

The first shift Lee County made was treating staffing not as an HR function, but as a district-wide operational priority. 

They implemented Stephen Covey's 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) framework, tracking their wildly important goal, 575 to 0, with weekly precision. Dashboards showed vacancy numbers by school, by region, and by district. Data on applicants in the pipeline, interviews scheduled, and offers accepted was shared with every stakeholder, every week. 

"We didn't wait until July to panic," Dr. Johnston explained. And when they shared the data transparently with principals, something unexpected happened: a healthy competition began. Once fully staffed, principals started passing promising candidates to schools that still had openings; peer partnerships formed organically. 

To fill the hardest-to-staff positions, Lee County partnered with higher education institutions and Kelly Education to build a certified substitute teacher pipeline. Rather than treating substitutes as a temporary fix, they reframed the role as a long-term talent pipeline. They identified Kelly Education substitute teachers who held bachelor's degrees, connected them to certification pathways, and held information sessions at the district office to walk candidates through their options. The intern-to-teacher bridge took it further, with Kelly hiring education interns and placing them directly into Lee County classrooms before graduation, so they were already learning the district's systems and building relationships with students before they ever stepped into a full-time role. 

Kelly Education also maintained a master certified list of credentialed substitute teachers that principals could access directly, cutting response time and keeping classrooms covered without routing everything through central HR. 

The result? By the first day of school, 69 of their schools started with zero vacancies. The remaining 37 open positions were filled with certified Kelly Education substitute teachers — keeping their promise that every student would walk into a classroom with a certified teacher on day one. Year over year, Lee County reduced vacancies by 81%, compared to an 18% drop statewide. 

"Project Believe wasn't just a recruitment campaign," Dr. Johnston reflected. "It was an operational overhaul." 

Once the teachers were in the building, Lee County launched Project Thrive — their retention initiative — using the same framework to track and support the staff they'd worked so hard to hire. 

Lever two: Competing on your district brand.

Filling seats is only half the equation. The other half is giving families a reason to choose you. 

That's where Kristina Houlihan came in. Her message to district leaders was direct: you have to identify your competitive edge and then actually sell it. 

"We have to start operating like a business in our school district," she said. "One that can scale rapidly to meet fluctuating needs." 

For Lee County, that meant taking stock of what they offer that private schools and charter schools simply can't match, like:

• AP and IB programs
• Cambridge curriculum
• CTE pathways that allow students to graduate with industry certifications—some career opportunities paying over $100,000 without a four-year degree
• Athletics and performing arts
• A depth and scale of diversity that smaller alternatives can't replicate

The key is not just having those programs — it's telling people about them. 

Lee County leaned into social media and community communications to share student wins: valedictorians, championship athletic programs, graduation milestones. The transparency and the storytelling together build trust. And trust, in a school choice environment, is enrollment. 

"That's what you want to share with the community," Houlihan said. "Those are your verified results." 

The underlying message for any district: if families are leaving for alternatives, start by asking why, and then close the gap. You may have more to offer than you're currently communicating. 

Lever three: Leading policy, not just reacting to it.

The third lever is the one most school districts leave on the table: government relations and advocacy. 

Lee County made a deliberate choice, in Houlihan's words, to "stop reacting to policy and start leading it." With a new Superintendent came an opportunity to reinvent Lee County's relationships at the local, state, and federal levels. 

In the first six months alone, that proactive approach yielded a $14.4 to $19 million financial win by resolving a permitting issue with the Army Corps of Engineers and accelerating a school construction project by two years. 

But beyond the financial returns, Houlihan offered a mindset shift that matters regardless of what your state's current legislation looks like: stop fighting the concept and start shaping the implementation. 

"The world of universal education choice is here," she said. "It's moving across the United States. Just recently, Texas is going to start their first wave of voucher programs. So, it's here." 

Her advice for districts that haven't yet faced school choice legislation is to start building those legislative relationships in the offseason, when lawmakers have more time. Bring in your subject matter experts — your CFO, your safety and security chief — to give legislators real, tangible context. Lead with outcomes for students, not just operational concerns. And stop saying "the law won't let us" and start asking, "here's how the law can let us win." 

Step one: Shift your posture.

When asked whether this was a Florida-specific playbook, Houlihan was unequivocal: it isn’t. "Florida definitely created the blueprint," she said. "But other states are doing it differently. Pay attention to the differences and take it as an opportunity." 

Dr. Johnston closed with a challenge that reframes the entire conversation: "What if every classroom in our nation had a certified teacher? What would that mean for our nation? When you really think about that, it's pretty powerful." 

Lee County dared to believe that was possible and proved it. The strategy wasn't magic. It was discipline, belief, partnerships, and a willingness to compete. 

"Shift your posture, compete on your brand, lead with belief," Dr. Johnston said. "Because if we don't believe as leaders that we can accomplish these hard things, our teams won't either." 

The partnership that made it possible. 

The staffing results Lee County achieved weren't built in isolation — and they didn't happen by chance. As the nation's largest provider of education talent, Kelly Education works with districts every day to address recruiting, hiring, and workforce challenges, and that expertise was a throughline in Lee County's success.  

When the last 37 vacancies remained open on the first day of school, it was Kelly Education certified substitute teachers who filled them — and the district kept the promise they'd made to their community.