How a superintendent turned a denied grant and a brand-new state law into a hybrid program for grades 7-12.
When Dunder Mifflin pushed Michael Scott out the door, he did the most Michael Scott thing possible and opened a rival paper company in a converted janitor’s closet. With two employees and a pricing model that made zero mathematical sense, the operation was cramped and chaotic and somehow good enough to poach so many clients that Dunder Mifflin ended up buying it out.
Dr. James Whitfield pulled off a far more responsible comeback at Treetops School International, a pre-K through 12 charter in Euless, Texas. After budget math forced the board to cut grades 7 through 12, James brought them back as a hybrid and virtual program that skips the old staffing model entirely. He spent several years as a teacher and basketball coach in Texas public schools before arriving at Treetops, so he knows how to draw up a new play when the old one stops working.
“Out of all these challenges, there was this huge opportunity for growth,” he says.
Key takeaways:
- A school of any size can bring back a cut program by rebuilding it as a hybrid model.
- Treetops School cut grades 7-12 after 10 teachers for roughly 60 high schoolers ran a deficit topping $250,000 every year.
- Launching a hybrid program with a few grades first lets schools fix login and scheduling bugs before scaling up to every grade.
60 kids, 10 teachers and a $250K hole
Treetops is the kind of school where kids build picnic tables out of fallen trees and spend recess by a creek, which is a dream if you’re eight and a tougher sell if you’re 14 and itching to try out for a team. The school never fielded sports or a band, so families tended to head for the exits around seventh grade, and some ninth-grade classes shrank to a grand total of eight students.
That left the upper grades with a staffing setup that looked great in a brochure and terrible on a spreadsheet.
“We had roughly 60 kids in grades 9 through 12, and we had like 10 teachers assigned to those 60 kids,” James says. “That came at a significant cost.”
The gap topped a quarter million dollars every single year, and James says that money “could have been invested in early learning, where we had larger numbers of students.” Meanwhile, every new course meant another hire, so the elective menu stayed about as multifaceted as the vending machine at the DMV.
“You take art and you take Spanish and you take digital media,” James says. “That’s it.”
So the board made the call to cut grades 7 through 12. James felt that decision at his own dinner table, because his son was finishing sixth grade at Treetops and had to switch schools.
“That was hard, but it was something that was essential to the sustainability of this place,” he says.
If that story sounds familiar, you’re in crowded company. At least 135 public schools across Texas have closed or gotten approval to close since late 2023, according to data from Our Schools Our Democracy.
Build a cheaper, weirder version
Most leaders in James’s shoes would have spent the next few years saving up to rebuild the old program exactly as it was. James skipped that plan, mostly because the old program was the problem. Ten teachers for 60 kids was what drained the budget in the first place, and rebuilding it brick by brick would just bring the same leak back with a fresh coat of paint.
He bet on a hybrid model instead. Seventh and eighth graders would come to campus and work through Subject’s platform at their own pace with a guide in the lab, while high schoolers learned fully online. One platform could offer more courses than a small staff ever could, and it wouldn’t need a new salary every time a student wanted to try something new.
The goal was a program that solved the same problem on a smaller budget, even if it looked nothing like the old one. Think of it as a reboot that wisely skips the original cast’s contract negotiations.
How Treetops brought back a cut program
Step 1: Move when the law moves
In 2025, Texas passed Senate Bill 569, which gave virtual and hybrid programs a new legal home. Before that, only a handful of Texas districts could run one — so for a school like Treetops, the bill worked like a building permit.
“[Bill 569] opened the doors for us to start investigating what it would mean to do a virtual-slash-hybrid program,” James says.
The team applied for state grants to help pay for the launch and got turned down, which is usually the moment a project gets filed in a drawer labeled “someday.” Treetops kept going anyway. As James saw it, the law was the real opening, and grant money would have been a nice bonus on top.
Step 2: Pick the vendor that asks about kids
Next came the vendor tour. James met with providers from across the country, and a lot of the pitches had the energy of a timeshare presentation aimed squarely at the grown-ups.
“These people come in and they talk to you about what the adults need. And that’s never been my thing,” he says. “Let’s talk about what the kids need.”
So he stopped grading vendors on their slide decks and started listening for who brought up students first. Subject’s team got there before he had to steer the conversation, and from that point the choice got easy. His board, which he’d been dropping hints to along the way, signed off without much drama.
Step 3: Start small enough to fix fast
Instead of relaunching six grades at once, Treetops brought back seventh and eighth graders as hybrid learners on campus and kept high school fully virtual for year one.
“We really wanted to start with a small group here in person to kind of just work through the kinks,” James says.
A smaller launch keeps a bad week from snowballing into a bad year, and it lets the team fix problems while the stakes still fit inside one computer lab.
Step 4: Survive login week
Somebody should make a horror movie about the first week of a software rollout. Treetops’s student rosters in Clever had to sync with Subject’s platform, and every username had to follow the exact same format, which is the kind of detail that never comes up in the sales meeting.
The team spent about five days “banging our heads against the wall,” James says. Subject’s team also stopped by in person on the first day of school and cleared up in about an hour what would have normally required a long chain of emails. Once the plumbing worked, it kept working.
“Now our process is so smooth, it just goes to our counselor, it goes to our registrar, boom, sync,” he says.
Step 5: Fix bugs mid-season
About six weeks into the semester, the school counselor noticed that some students were getting assignments on school holidays. Few things unite a room of seventh graders faster than homework on a day off, so this one needed attention. James flagged it for Subject and kept the program rolling instead of treating one glitch as proof the whole idea was broken.
That’s the part he wishes more of his peers understood. A lot of leaders want every detail locked down before they launch anything, and James thinks that’s exactly how schools end up watching from the bleachers.
“If you wait until then, you’re going to be so far behind,” he says.
Treat a new law like a building permit
Before the cut, upper-grade students picked electives off a three-item menu. Now the menu is a lot longer, and the old art-Spanish-digital media lineup looks like a dial-up modem by comparison. “It’s expanded access to these opportunities that our students would have never been able to get before,” James says.
The program also runs with a guide in the lab instead of a hallway full of subject-area teachers, so the quarter-million-dollar problem can’t sneak back in through a side door.
James got a bonus he didn’t see coming, too. He’d worried that students learning online would feel invisible to him, and it turned out he could see them better than ever. The platform’s daily check-in lets students share how they’re feeling before class, and he can follow their progress in real time from his office. When a student says they’re stressed, he can send a quick note letting them know he sees them and his door is open.
“I’m able to keep track and keep tabs and even communicate in real time with these students in a way that I couldn’t if they were sitting in a traditional classroom,” he says.
James sees the whole model as a bridge. It buys Treetops three to five years to build the financial muscle for a bigger in-person 7-12 program down the road. In the meantime, it gives families an option the old setup never could, like letting a high schooler who needs a job work around school instead of choosing between them.
For any leader staring at a shelved program, his playbook travels well. Use the law you already have and start smaller than feels comfortable. And when you go vendor shopping, give extra credit to whoever asks about students first.
Maybe hold off on the football team, though. James has already done the scouting report.
“That’s going to be the worst football team,” he says.
SB 569 opened the door for Texas schools to run hybrid and virtual programs. Subject can help you walk through it without waiting on a grant. Chat with us.
FAQs
How can a small school bring back a program it cut for budget reasons?
A small school can bring back a cut program by rebuilding it as a hybrid or virtual program instead of rehiring a full staff. Treetops School International in Texas relaunched grades 7-12 with on-campus students working through Subject’s platform alongside a guide in the lab.
What is Texas Senate Bill 569?
Texas Senate Bill 569 is a 2025 law that gave virtual and hybrid programs a new legal home in Texas public education. Before SB 569, only a handful of Texas districts could run those programs. Treetops School used SB 569 to relaunch grades 7-12 after its grant applications were denied.
How should schools choose a virtual learning vendor?
Schools should pick a virtual learning vendor that asks about the student experience before talking about what administrators need. Dr. James Whitfield of Treetops School chose Subject after its team brought up students without being prompted, a sign the partnership would share his priorities.
What problems come up when launching a hybrid school program?
The most common early problem in a hybrid program launch is getting rosters and logins to sync across systems like Clever. Treetops School spent about five days on roster and login setup. Six weeks in, the school also caught assignments landing on school holidays and flagged the fix to its vendor.