Billie Donegan is a lead school change coach and professional development provider at CSSR. Billie was on the original Vision Team for South Grand Prairie High School’s whole-school reform dividing the school into five wall-to-wall career academies, and worked closely with the implementation plan and process for five years in various capacities. In 1999/2000, South Grand Prairie High School was selected as a New American High School.

Since retiring, Billie has worked with numerous research/reform organizations in Smaller Learning Communities implementation. In addition to CSSR, she has worked with SREB’s High Schools That Work, the Career Academy Support Network at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins’ Talent Development High Schools and Freshman Success Academies, the Colorado Children’s Campaign for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, School and Main, Brown University, GMS Partners, and Performance Learning Systems. In addition, she has served as facilitator at Career Academy Institutes in six states and facilitated five USDOE Smaller Learning Community grants. She received the 2002 Leadership Award from the National Career Academy Coalition and has written curriculum for Keystone, Capstone, Senior Projects, ninth grade support classes, and teacher advisories.

Billie is the co-author of Coaching Reluctant Learners: Engaging the Brains and Hearts of Today’s Students. She believes that the heart of any reform takes place in the classroom. If student achievement is to go up, today’s teachers must be provided with both the beliefs and the skills that have proven results in engaging reluctant students. She has served as a teacher trainer in constructivist classroom design, and worked with teaching teams on effective use of teams and in creating learning communities in the classroom.  Such a design focuses on unwrapping the standards and facilitating student engagements so that more students are reached and all students achieve higher levels.