TO: Principals Jennifer Gutierrez, Director, Exceptional Student Services Jessica O’Muireadhaigh, Director, Mental Health and Counseling Danette Lippman, Director, Health Services and Medicaid Services FROM: Damon Smith Chief Personnel Officer C: P-20 Learning Community Directors Judy Dauman, Director Strategic Support & Innovation, Office of Autonomous Schools Lamont Browne, Executive Director, Office of Autonomous Schools Human Resources Directors DATE: February 7, 2018 RE: Recruitment and Retention Pilot for Targeted Roles for the 2018-19 school year During the January School Leader Meeting, Superintendent Munn shared with you that APS would benefit from a one-time increase in revenue for the 2017-18 school year due to property taxes. As a result, the APS Board of Education approved a readopted 2017-18 budget. The Board of Education approved using a portion of these dollars to adopt a new elementary literacy curriculum and pilot incentives to recruit and retain staff in some of our hardest to fill positions. Given this unique opportunity, I wanted to share details of what this pilot will entail. Why pilot hard-to-fill recruitment and retention incentives? As noted in previous conversations about our Human Capital Strategy, APS is committed to attracting and retaining high-quality educators to ensure that our students benefit from the high-quality instruction and supports they need to shape successful futures. Across the country and locally, there are particular content areas and support functions that school systems struggle to fill year after year. This means positions remain unfilled well into the school year as learning and support for our students has already begun. For some of our support service provider positions, this often means contracting with a third-party organization, at greater cost, to ensure we have the providers necessary to meet student needs. As part of our commitment to strengthening our human capital work, APS is conducting a one-year pilot to enhance recruitment and retention of our hardest to fill positions by offering incentives. Given that most of our neighboring districts offer incentives, this pilot allows us to remain competitive. Please be assured this is not the only way we are thinking about recruitment and retention. As we shared with you in December, as part of our Human Capital strategy, we continue to investigate strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This work includes retention focus groups and requesting information about staff intentions to return to APS. Our human capital work continues and will become more robust as we refine our strategies. What recruitment and retention incentives is APS piloting? Who is eligible for these pilot incentives? Staff members, new and returning, who fill one of the eligible roles at designated schools for the 2018-19 school years will receive a one-time incentive for committing to APS as detailed in the chart below. Since this is a pilot, with limited one-time resources, we are intentionally targeting incentives in two categories, with limited scope. These targeted categories allow APS to keep the initial pilot narrow and to focus on specific roles with the potential for greatest impact. All incentives will be paid through district funds in the August 2018 payroll. Categories Hard-to-Fill Special Service Providers Hard-to-Fill Teaching Roles Methodology Target incentives toward the district’s hardest to fill Special Service Provider roles by:  Identifying the SSP roles that have the greatest number of vacancies and/or are ultimately filled by third-party contractors. Target incentives toward the district’s hardest to fill teaching content areas in schools by: • Only designated schools eligible  Identifying the district’s hardest to fill teaching content areas based on vacancies at the start of the 17-18 school year, and Target these role specific incentives toward schools that are experiencing above average turnover rates over multiple years. Pilot Eligibility Criteria  Pilot Incentives Offered  Returning school nurses, school psychologists, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists who make an early commitment to return to APS for the 18-19 school year will receive a stipend of $3000.  New to APS school nurses, school psychologists, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists hired to APS for the 18-19 school year will receive a stipend of $2500.  SY18-19 returning school nurses, school psychologists, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists who did not make an early commitment to return to APS will receive a stipend of $2500. Special education teachers, secondary (6-12th grade) math teachers and secondary science teachers at designated schools during the 201819 school year  APS teachers of special education, secondary math (612th grade) and secondary science (6-12th grade) at designated schools who make an early commitment to return to their current school(s) for the 18-19 school year will receive a stipend of $3000. List of designated schools forthcoming  New to APS special education, secondary math (6-12th grade) and secondary science (6-12th grade) teachers hired to serve at designated schools will receive a stipend of $2500.  SY 18-19 returning APS teachers of special education, secondary math (6-12th grade) and secondary science (6-12th grade) who transfer to an eligible school or did not make an early commitment to return to APS will receive a stipend of $2500. Speech language pathologists, school psychologists, occupational therapists, and nurses who are APS employees and work at any school in the district during the 2018-19 school year. Note: These incentives are offered for all schools, since these roles are hired at the district level and are placed in specific buildings after hiring. What do we expect to see and learn from this pilot? We expect to see improved retention rates for the targeted roles, fewer vacancies in these roles at the start of the 18-19 school year and a deeper pool of external applicants wanting to teach in APS. Through this pilot, we hope to learn more about how incentives impact our ability to recruit and retain teachers and special service providers in our hardest to fill roles. This information will be critical as we work to continuously improve our recruitment and retention efforts and compete with neighboring districts for the best educators. Next Steps     The list of designated schools will be shared next week. We will share more specifics with impacted hiring managers for these roles next week. This will include more detail on how to leverage this incentive to recruit and retain staff. We will be sharing this information more broadly with teachers next week, as well. In the interim, please direct any questions to your HR Director or submit them via the following link: https://tinyurl.com/apsincentivepilotquestions Thank you for your willingness to engage in this pilot with us. Undoubtedly, as a pilot, we expect to learn some valuable lessons along the way. We look forward to continuously improving our human capital work in APS.