Frontline Blog

Questions on our Employee Evaluation tool formerly known as MyLearningPlan OASYS? You’ve come to the right place!

For K-12 Human Resources offices, the task of staffing the district for another school year needs to be a two-sided coin, one side focused on getting (recruiting and selection), and the other side focused on keeping (onboarding and retention). Finding the top employees for your district is a complex and time-consuming project, but it is only part of the job. It's just as important to focus on keeping your district's top employees engaged and satisfied with their position at the district.

A Department of Labor (DOL) audit is the "monster under the bed" for many payroll and business professionals. You don't want to believe in it. You don't think you'll ever see it. But it could pop up at any time, and if it does, it might not look pretty.

Like most school districts, the substitute shortage has affected Elk River School District 728. Over the last three years, our district has struggled to fill all of its open jobs. This has resulted in a lot of problems. If we can't get a substitute to fill an absence, we have to parcel out the students in a variety of ways to other teachers who are on the job. Some teachers have had to give up their prep hour to cover a class. In the elementary schools, we sometimes have had to move kids into other classrooms, and those teachers would have to double up. When we do that, our teachers' contract requires that we double up their pay. So we were seeing a huge cost increase, twice as much as it cost us for subs.

Gone are the days of simply calling up a substitute and considering the absence filled. Even if you use a substitute placement and absence management system to manage the scheduling side, how do you know if the substitute ever actually showed up for the job?

Many school districts I speak with across the country are examining how they recruit and hire great educators and other staff. I think this is positive as having a great recruiting and teacher selection process can ensure your organization is looking for new candidates in the right places and using the right measures to select the best person for the job!

Last year we conducted a survey to find out how school districts were preparing for the then-pending Affordable Care Act. Recently we re-conducted that same survey to see how statistics have changed in the last year. Here were some of our key takeaways from the last two years.

We all want the best candidates filling vacancies in our school systems. Regardless of the position we are looking to fill, be it a classroom teacher, a superintendent or a bus driver, we want the person who will outperform our expectations and make our school community a better place.

The lack of substitutes has continued to be a hot topic throughout 2014 and into this current school year. Dozens of news articles document the struggle districts have been facing since 2013 with declining fill rates and a lack of substitutes.