Organizational Design: The Merced County Office Of Education

Design guides the way strategies are created within an organization and determines how they will be carried out. It establishes the roles and responsibilities of members, impacting their behavior and performance. Furnishing a plan for how work will be completed, organizational design determines the way tasks, decisions and assets are managed. County offices of education provide services to school districts by taking on tasks that are better handled at a county level due to complexity and specialized requirements. The Merced County Office of Education is one of these institutions, supporting multiple school districts and classrooms at dozens of public schools. Working towards their goal of student success, organizational design is the framework

Within these departments employees are grouped into programs and further divided into small teams that function to complete specific tasks assigned solely to that team. “The advantages of departmentalization by function; It brings about specialization which makes optimum utilization of human resources and eliminates the duplication of effort which brings efficiency” ( Ahmed,p.32). Teachers and instructional aides working in the special education department are uniquely trained to manage the educational needs of disabled students. Responsible for crafting lesson plans, carrying out student instruction and documenting student educational progress, no one else working in the organization knows how to complete the tasks of these classroom staff. Expectations and job descriptions throughout the organization are detailed, and all tasks formalized for consist practice by staff with little room for autonomy. Staff become experts in their area and assigned roles which is beneficial as they produce results, the downside is they have little understanding of how other departments operate or affect the organization as a whole. Also, by performing repetitive activities employees are at a higher risk of becoming bored or fatigued with their work which can impact

By keeping the span of control small, managers are able to closely monitor employees, give them better direction and respond with faster feedback to concerns. Coordinators carry out this management role at MCOE, supervising classroom staff by visiting school sites weekly and hosting team meetings monthly to discuss best practices and formulate strategies for problem situations. Employing multiple levels of management has created a hierarchy with centralized decision making. While highly educated and informed to make decisions the coordinators are slow to respond to problems and communication barriers occur between staff and upper levels of management. Assistant superintendents are often unaware of issues that affect teachers in the classrooms such as medically fragile students and emotionally disturbed students that require a high level of care. Leading to unrealistic expectations being placed on teachers, to complete student assessment reports and improve test scores without adequate time or staff to accomplish