Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Human Resources and Talent Development (HRTD) Committee Meeting, Thursday, December 19, 2024

Date: Thursday, December 19, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 58m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1040983868?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-20. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Good afternoon everybody. My name is Dena Griffiths and I'm calling to order the HRTD committee meeting for today, December 19th, 2024. Any public comment? No, no public comment today. This meeting is audio recorded and posted in board docs. Let's see, we don't have any speakers, so we'll move on to, we're going to move on to 3. 1 approval of the November 14th minutes.

[00:00:34] Is there any discussion? Could I please have a motion to approve? - I move that we approve the November 14th HRTD committee meeting minutes. - The motion has been made and approved by Ms. Chandler and seconded, anybody seconded?

[00:00:54] - Ms. Griffiths, I thought that I should abstain since I was not able to be present for the last meeting. - You are right, so I'll second for it. You're correct, thanks. Thank you for reminding me. All those in favor, please raise your hand, say aye. - Aye. - Aye. that motion passes we have discussion items only tonight we will move on to 4.01 human resources and talent development HRTD committee the annual data report did you want to go ahead with that Ms. Mullen thank you yes thank

[00:01:24] you Mrs. Griffiths each year HR goes to unbelievable lengths to capture data that in the hopes of tracking trends that will ultimately guide any actions and support any actions we need to take to improve processes procedures and really evaluate any obstacles that may be coming this evening we are presenting a plethora of data in regards to our hiring experiences and I will turn it

[00:02:02] over to Executive Director Mr. Bennett to walk us through and Director Bob Phillips to also assist with that all right good evening everyone so I'll start by giving a shout out to the ERP team because they play a tremendous role in this they're a team that sits within DDI so they work very closely with with Bob and I to put this together so instrumental in their support so as Miss Boland said we're going to be going over a lot of data Mr. Phillips and I are gonna kind of go back and forth throughout so if you would and at the end

[00:02:38] we'll be happy to answer any questions so go ahead Katie our first is just to kind of root ourselves in our strategic goal everything that we do in HRTD links back to strategic goal number two seeking to cultivate a high-performing team of professionals and you'll see that in our data throughout this evening go ahead and go to the next one if you remember last month I talked a bit about the differing definitions of what is a hiring year versus what is a

[00:03:13] school year and I had even another one last time calendar year I believe but what we're going to be focusing in on on two of these this evening so for the majority of our hiring data it's actually going to be that very last column so for 24/25 our hiring year starts October 1st of 2023 and runs through september 30th of 2024 we refer to that as the hiring year for 24 25 in essence hiring for this school year later in the presentation we'll talk about separations retirements resignations

[00:03:49] and attrition and that sits more in a school year because teachers resign typically at the end of the school year so that data will be sitting as a school year date and again it'll be designated as such throughout the presentation go ahead this is our snapshot kind of across the board of the number of hires we had last year you can see them broken down by category we've got license of course that's our teachers school counselors and so forth we are still using the phrase classified here we haven't come up with a better phrase but that's where we're talking about teacher assistants

[00:04:26] administrative assistants and so forth administrative employees you know directors supervisors principals and so forth and so last year we hired a total of 3,657 individuals into the school system across those categories and on the next slide Katie if you would you can see our growth year-over-year for the last three years if you look at the gray bar that kind of gives you the totals so between 22 23 we went up by 157 into 23 24 and then up by another 178 you can

[00:05:05] see our our trend line is going up for teachers that's the green bar we're going up each year for teachers and licensed employees we're also going up for substitutes a lot of the other ones kind of ebb and flow based on our needs but you can see our substitutes trainees column is going up sizably each year as well so that again just gives you that pictorial of of how we're continuing to grow and then this is kind of our snapshot of the gender of all of our new hires and what you'll see here is the introduction of student data so

[00:05:44] throughout this presentation we try to compare and show you what the student population looks like so you'll see that again throughout the slides a lot of what mr. Phillips will go over you'll see that as well but you can kind of see here what the the gender makeup is of our students our license staff and again this is all new hires as well as classified and administrative so as we were kind of looking over our data for this even though it seems sizably more female across the board and all of our new hires the data for both administrative and classified we actually increased in the percentage of

[00:06:22] male new hires so those two had gone up in the license category it actually went down so we actually hired more female employees last year than we heard for this current year than we did the year before so again that's just kind of that big-picture snapshot and I'm going to turn things over to mr. Phillips to jump in thank you I'll be walking us through the next step which is our licensed new hires where we take a deeper dive of those important teachers some auxiliary staff who are filling our classrooms and in front of our and impacting our children. So the first

[00:06:59] slide is just a degree level of we of our 772 new hires and really the bachelor's degree has increased which is indicative of some of our in commonwealth colleges removing their master's programs for education. So that's just kind of a one anecdote but this is their degree level.

[00:07:22] Next slide, please. This slide represents the top schools that are 772 licensed new hires attended. Just note that if an employee received their bachelor's from UVA, for example, and then their master's from George Mason, we would count George Mason as for this data point.

[00:07:45] This, again, we utilize this data for our recruiting efforts when we're analyzing which schools and which job fairs we're going to attend, as well as how many LCPS staff are going to be representing us on the road at these particular job fairs.

[00:08:00] So we look at this very closely, just a new person or a new college to the top of the list here is Shepard University, which typically had not been a big, robust producer of teachers for us, but they've made a concerted effort in their college of education to pump out more teachers.

[00:08:22] So that's a good thing. Next slide, please. This next slide, again, is another good data point that we use recruiting. It shows the top undergraduate colleges and universities from our 772 new hires.

[00:08:39] Please note we didn't hire 96 new hires this year with a bachelor's degree from a non-U.S. college and university. So that was a big thing. A couple this year, again, Shepard is on this list, ODU, and SUNY, the State University of New York, as another one joining the ranks for our top attractees for, and I think, again, our initiatives that we started to bring candidates down to Virginia is starting to pay off for that.

[00:09:10] Next slide, please. This is their top postgraduate. Very similar when we're searching. We know we have a lot of partnerships with a lot of the Commonwealth universities, especially George Mason, which has a very robust master's program. So we do get a lot of master's candidates from George Mason to work for us in Loudoun County Public Schools. Another interesting one, University of Pittsburgh showing up again, another significantly far away university that has made the list that was not

[00:09:43] there last year. Next slide, please. We always like to bring our top talent back home to Loudoun. So this slide represents how many of our 772 licensed new hires are LCPS graduates. Note that this is self-reported, so if they don't tell us, we don't know. We can't go back and really look.

[00:10:04] This was just the aggregate total was a decrease of about 23 students or 23 new hires from last year. Next slide, please. Again, trying to keep the top talent in Loudoun County. We always look at our teacher cadet program and how many of those teacher cadets are coming back to work with us as teachers in Loudoun County. So we had, again, this is self-reported data. We had 42 teacher cadets come back to us work this year. 23 of those 42 returned on a letter of intent in our grow our

[00:10:43] own program that we started back in 2020 to come back to work for us in Loudoun as a teacher once they finished their high school, or excuse me, their college studies. So that was 23%. So we gave out 100 letters of intent in 2020, and 23% of them returned to work for us as a teacher. Some of them are in a master's program, so they've deferred that return. So we're hoping that they'll come back to us next year. Next slide. This slide represents the change in how many LCPS graduates and teacher cadets were hired year over year and again just as this is self-reported. So

[00:11:22] last year we didn't have as many LCPS or teacher cadet hires but hopefully we're again with our new initiatives we're going to increase and turn that around. And in 20s just a you know a reference point 2017-18 is when we started to track our teacher cadets returning to us in Loudoun next slide please this is our teacher cadet enrollment we're very excited by this the number of students that are actually exploring teachers the career pathway of teaching in our high schools so again we've been our the

[00:12:00] recruiting team and I think I talked about touched on this and our one of our other presentations the recruiting team goes out to the high schools to speak to the potential students who would sign up for the teacher cadet class so we're very excited by this number going up for this year and hopefully this school year we'll even have more number next slide this is just a quick snapshot of the makeup of the gender of the teacher cadets one thing we did this year in collaboration with CTE department who has a new lead Dr. Grubbs we've tried to

[00:12:37] remove the barriers or we are removing the barriers for students to get into the teacher get at class there used to be a quite a comprehensive application for the students just to take the class so we're removing that barrier if you're interested in teaching you want to find out what it's all about you can take that class in high school so we're very excited with the partnership with the CTE department this is the ethnicity and race of our teacher cadets who are in the program again tapping into the student body becoming more diverse hopefully they'll return to us as teachers and have a more diverse

[00:13:14] teaching body so we're very excited by that and then one thing that we do to keep in touch with them is our cadet advisor program and keeping them on the hook and maintaining the contact with them even when they go to college so we're very excited by that next slide and then this is just a year-over-year graphic or bar graph for what our teacher cadets looked like in terms of their demographics so you can see they are becoming overall more diverse along with our other student body that we see that the trend going in that next slide

[00:13:51] please this is always a good slide again going on tapping into the grow our own this slide shows the where our 772 licensed new hires came come from so 38 percent were existing LCPS employees that transition from another job classification into a teaching role so there was an increase of 32 this year as compared to the last year and hopefully with our tuition assistance initiative working on those alternate pathways programs that we've talked about in other meetings that we'll see that number go up

[00:14:29] mr bennett mentioned the hiring year that goes from october 1st to september 30th but we also have a shorter window that we call early hires because we find now especially with the shortage of teaching candidates that our early hires are our most or you know our most qualified and usually ready to jump in and start working with us in Loudoun so we try to get out on the road as early as possible and this past year we had 355 early offer letters that we could have issued and this

[00:15:08] year we issued 251 early offers at either a college fair that we attended or an LCPS fair that we hosted on Zoom events. So that was an increase from the last year. So that's a good thing that we're making earlier contact with all of our potential candidates to join Loudoun County as a teacher in the following August start. Of those 251 early intent letters, 151, excuse me, 154 signed on to join Loudoun county so we're very excited and you can see the

[00:15:48] breakdown here and what their areas are elementary secondary EL and special education and this was an increase from the last year of 35 new more early letters of intent signing on to Loudoun so again I think that's the impact of our signing bonuses that we've been offering this year this past year for them to join. Another important pipeline for us is our student teachers. The number of student teachers unfortunately is going down which is why we're exploring alternate pathways to licensure

[00:16:23] which I think is going to help create deeper pools. So this unfortunately has gone down. You know we're trying to work on some ways to recruit student teachers into Loudoun but again if they're not signing up in college it's hard to bring them into as a student teacher in Loudoun.

[00:16:40] Next slide. So of the 68 student teachers from the SY 2324, not 2425, but the 2324, this shows their status in Loudoun County in 2425. So approximately 84% of our student teachers that we hired the year before were retained across in some capacity in Loudoun. So again, a very important pipeline for us. Next slide. This is just our overall of the offers that we make

[00:17:18] to for our licensed staff to join Loudon. This represents our number that were declined. Note that this year was the first year that we started offering our early letters of intent through our applicant tracking system, PowerSchool, and some of the record keeping in that was not done consistently.

[00:17:38] So I mentioned on an earlier slide that some of those candidates declined our early offers. Not all of them are in this, And we've kind of cleaned that up for our next report that we'll offer. But you can see it's about, if you added them in, it'd be about 15% of, right now this slide is only 10, but it'd be about 15% of our offers are declined for licensed staff.

[00:18:05] I'm going to turn back over to you, right, Mr. Bennett, on this one? Oh, not you're on this one. Okay. I'll keep going. All right, very good. So our next slide, we talk about all employees and staff. And as Mr. Bennett talked about, comparing it to our student population because we want our demographics of our teaching and work staff to try to mirror those of the student population.

[00:18:31] So, again, one thing to be aware of is that all of this is self-reported by our employees when they complete an application. And these charts that you're going to see comparing this data does not include part-time substitutes and or coaches.

[00:18:47] so it's more of our full-time taking a snapshot of our full-time. Next slide please. We also compare that for our new all new hires so we've got all of our staff and then all of our new hires and again this does not include all of our new hires that were in the part-time or substitute or stipended class coach coaching roles. Next slide. Taking it one depth further we take a look at all of our licensed staff versus our students and what that looks like. Going to the next slide please.

[00:19:25] You could see all of our licensed employees with a yearly comparison with their ethnicity and race. So you can see from one school year to the next school year what the demographics look like for all of our licensed staff.

[00:19:41] Again, a lot of the things that we talked about in previous, the candidate's journey and mitigating bias in interview processes, we are starting to see small incremental gains in making our licensed employee more diverse. This chart better demonstrates that. This is a four-year look or comparison of our licensed employees from 2020 to our last year, school year 24-25.

[00:20:12] So you can see from here, and if you were to do some math statistics, that the proportion of our ethnically, racially diverse licensed staff members increased by 18.8% from 2021-22 school year to our current school year.

[00:20:31] this increase was from 15.2 percent overall to 18 percent. If you go back to 2017-18, which would have been on previous HRTD committee reports, this proportion goes up even higher to 42.9 percent, and that was an increase from 12.6 percent ethically, racially diverse staff composition to its current state of 18 percent. So again, moving up those proportions, and that's a good next slide is our night this slide or chart represents the ethnicity race

[00:21:10] makeup of our licensed new hires compared to our let's see yep so I'm 29 to our student demographics and you can see that some in some racial subgroups that we have some work to do but again we're trying to move that and the next slide represents that for our new hires so you can see that again we are making strong efforts and gains in hiring a more diverse licensed staff. Here is a very another chart that's similar our licensed new hires we look at every year

[00:21:49] and compare that to past years and what the composition of our licensed new hires looked like and again if you were to go back and do the comparisons and do the math you'd be having an increase of 38.3% of the percentage of licensed new hires when compared to 2021. So that's, again, a very strong indication of our hiring practices and mitigating bias throughout the hiring, as well as doing a better job of recruiting at schools that produce diverse talent. Now I'm back to you. There you go. All right, so I'll do the

[00:22:28] next few slides. So we do the same sort of representation on these slides for the different uh position type so this is administrative employees again all administrative employees in the division compared with students across the board there were very small changes if you will from the prior school year from between 23 24 into 24 25 so very small changes less than half a percent in any of these go ahead and go to the next one this one administrative new hires compared to

[00:23:03] students we did see our most sizable increase here was actually in Asian hires did go up by 3% otherwise these are also pretty pretty similar across the board but we did see an increase there go ahead and go to the next one when we look at classified employees again comparing them to students across the board we did have some increases in Asian black Hispanic and two or more two more racist those categories all did see some increase most of the increases were around a

[00:23:41] percent or less but again some some gains in the right direction and then go ahead to the next slide so classified new hires again against students we actually almost exclusively across the board in our diverse categories we saw increases again small increases but increases nonetheless so we did see that here as well and i hope mr phillips took enough time to breathe because it's going right back to him so besides hires we also take a deeper dive into our applicant

[00:24:16] pool and what that looks like and what the composition of our applicant pool is these were the total number of applicants that we had for the last hiring season please note that if someone is applying to both. For example, if someone applies to a licensed and a classified vacancy, they will be included in both applicant pools. But if they apply to more than one job in that pool, they will be counted once. And the applicant totals include all applicants, whether

[00:24:51] they are qualified or not qualified for a position. So there are many times where we get applicants in our licensed pools that aren't qualified but it's very difficult to tease them out from our accounts and the reporting tools that we have within PowerSchool. If you look go to the next slide this is the yearly comparison so in 23-24 we had 12,558 applicants last year we had 14,955 so that's a good thing for us in terms of attracting talent to who want to work for us

[00:25:28] loud in county public schools and even the licensed one went up from about went up to about 500 um more applicants which is good whether they were qualified or not um just it's it's still a good thing that people are interested in teaching for us in loudon next slide this is all of our applicants again looking at what the composition of our pool um in terms of their ethnicity and race again this This is self-reported data from the applicants, and just note that about 1,741 did not report

[00:26:03] their ethnicity or race, so we're talking about 12,700 candidates who did apply to us who did report, so it is a pretty strong number in terms of the N that we use to calculate all these.

[00:26:19] If you look at the next one, again, is the yearly comparison. It's good to see that our subcategories for the different races are going up, so that's a strong indication that we are attracting that diverse talent pool and hopefully getting those candidates in front of our hiring managers.

[00:26:42] Next slide. This slide represents the percentage of all new hires that were hired for the 24-25 school year when compared to the 23-24 school year. So again, we look for any discrepancies that may be, especially for those demographic areas that have a large end, note that the Native American one might be a very small pool.

[00:27:09] So a couple shifts here or there may cause significant changes. This slide is the percentage of the new hires compared to the applicant pool. So again, we're looking for any large discrepancies between the different race categories or subgroups there.

[00:27:31] So, again, we want it nice and even and equal distribution, and we pretty much have that. Note, again, ones with small ends or a small group might, a couple of hires here or there, may significantly impact it. Our licensed applicants, again, as a yearly comparison, you can see the change or the demographics there in the blue when compared to the green the year before.

[00:27:59] You can see the Asian and black and Hispanic who have all seen increases in the number of applicants, which for us is a good thing. Getting more diverse in terms of our applicant pool leads to hopefully a more diverse hired pool.

[00:28:16] Next slide. And this is the percentage of our applicants who are hired for licensed jobs. Again, looking for major discrepancies or differences in the heights of their bars. You can see it's pretty equally distributed within percentage points of one another.

[00:28:36] Again, the Native American one being an anomaly statistically because of the small and that it represents. Back to you. All right. So now we've spent 43 slides talking about hiring people.

[00:28:54] So we're going to take a handful of slides and we're going to talk about separations or attrition statistics. So what you see here are the last three years' worth of attrition. Some of the highlights that, at least as we're tracking and monitoring data, we did see a sizable decrease in our attrition for licensed employees.

[00:29:15] So, we like that. That's a favorable sign. Nationally, some of the trend data and the information we found is nationally that hovers around 8%. In certain places, I've seen Virginia sitting at about 10%.

[00:29:31] Again, this is in teachers, so I'll speak specifically to teachers. So us sitting at just under 7% is certainly a move in the right direction. You can see with classified, we've kind of been creeping down over the years. Again, a positive sign. And then administrative, you know, as Mr. Phillips was referring to, based on our size, our population here, some of these statistics can be thrown off because it's not a large pool to start with.

[00:29:59] But again, all things that we track and monitor. Go ahead to the next one. So for these next couple slides, I'm going to separate out retirements versus resignations. What's important to note is this is self-reported retirement.

[00:30:16] So someone can say, "I'm retiring," but not actually be eligible to retire. So it's close, but again, it's based on what someone can enter in our system. So you can see we did have a spike last year in licensed retirements.

[00:30:31] again these can also be based on cohorts of people that are kind of working through and are eligible for for a retirement but we do monitor all of those trends you can see it did spike it's settled back out which goes along with the overall attrition that you saw on the prior slide go ahead to the next one the next one just jumps us in to resignations so again this is people voluntarily leaving for whatever reason and you see we did have it we had a little bit of a spike last year with licensed resignations and then a

[00:31:08] significant drop a well over a hundred less voluntary separations in the license category last year again with the other ones kind of reducing as well but again you see that increase where we saw earlier the increase with attrition for administrative employees so this is going to be very hard to read even on the sheet in front of you I have a slide and a couple of slides that really drills in on on steps one through five but you can just even see from from this

[00:31:43] vantage point we lose a significant proportion of our teachers our licensed staff in that early part of their career so we do a lot of things in our office with mentoring and coaching to try to support early career teachers but you can really see that that that's the area where we lose teachers what's super interesting when you look down through like let's say step one we've been coming downward so again trends in the right direction keeping in mind that that 21-22 school year was still pretty pandemic influenced or impacted I'll say

[00:32:21] where we were seeing 13.38% step one teachers leaving that's down to the 8.53% last year so again we're moving in the right direction both the step one and step two but what used to be the first five years where we would often say that first five years are where we lose a lot it actually has crept up a little bit where if you look at even the attrition it's upwards of around steps seven or eight so again letting us know kind of sending us messages what do we need to do to make sure our teachers feel supported and what services and things do we need to provide so

[00:33:01] go ahead and go to the next slide i don't know what happened to the header here so i'll apologize for that but this is that more focused view of the first five steps where you can see the numbers a lot better you can see that 21 22 school year we were very high almost across the board in all steps steps one through five we've made improvements in each of those you can see with the exception of i think it's step five we've actually reduced from last year we've reduced our attrition at each of

[00:33:36] those steps but again things things that we need to monitor that we need to track in our office to make sure we're we're supporting early career educators go ahead and go to the next one this just gives you a snapshot of the overall reasons why each of the these different employee categories again this is all self-reported when someone submits a separation of why they're leaving so for licensed the biggest lead reason is relocating followed by family or personal and then

[00:34:12] taking a licensed position elsewhere we do ask people if they're going to one of our neighboring divisions or another school system again keeping in mind this is self-reported so you can see we did lose some educators to Fairfax to Prince William to some other Virginia divisions we're hopeful that our recent change in our step placement practice in our policy of the cap removal of the cap if you will we're hopeful that that may have an impact here again time will tell but we're hopeful that's going to help with both recruiting and attracting

[00:34:49] tenured educators but also with those who may not feel the appeal to go elsewhere because we're giving we're giving that full credit again with classified with classified and administrative a sizable amount did not disclose the reason and then again often we see family and personal we see career change people take positions outside of the system so those are the kind of the primary drivers of why people are resigning and I think this is

[00:35:23] our last substantive slide so visually this lets you kind of see this is all separations this is retirement this is a resignation so you can see the majority of our people are voluntarily resigning followed by retirement a very small percentage are involuntary separations and then an even smaller percentage are those who who we've lost throughout the year who have passed away so that's the smallest the smallest number in that group so again that number that slide represents over a thousand employees so we've lost you know

[00:36:01] separated for various reasons over a thousand employees last year and we think that's it so we've talked enough but we're happy to answer any questions thank you so much for the presentation is there any discussion on the presentation miss donahue thank you chair griffiths so first i want to say thank you to hrtd staff for lots of things for pulling together all this data and putting it in a comprehensible format for us

[00:36:37] and but more importantly for the efforts that you all have been making to recruit and retain our staff and I'm I'm also very pleased to hear both that that HRTD is prioritizing prioritizing but understands the benefits of diversifying our staff and is making intentional efforts to increase the diversification and and that it's working like it's really exciting to see that the the changes are happening I had just a couple of questions about some

[00:37:13] information that was on some of those slides starting on slide number five which is about new higher growth I this might be answered by the later part of your presentation but I had written note here about why we hire hiring so many people for 24 25 it seems like a kind of significant increase from the previous couple of years, but then it does seem to somewhat match up with the statistics from later in your presentation about the high amount of attrition from 21, 22, 22, 23, whatever year that was.

[00:37:52] Is that, so is that this increase of hiring was to catch up with that year of attrition? Well, and some of it's to catch up of attrition, but also there's a sizable increase. We've also made some significant increases in our substitute pool.

[00:38:09] So some of it is, yes, people are leaving, and some of the higher numbers we saw last year, but it's also, we're increasing, we're adding new positions, new schools are opening, so we've got a balance of that. But also, we've been making concerted efforts the last two years to grow the subpool even more, which you see the increase there of 120, 220 more, 220 more subs.

[00:38:39] and then my next question is related to slide number seven which you don't really need to see the slide for I just I was surprised to see that there are applicants with associates degrees in the hiring pool not that there's anything wrong with that but what like what kind of degrees what kind of positions are those hires the license includes some auxiliary positions so there are some that could be working with example as signers or with children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing that might not have the full license or a

[00:39:18] bachelor's degree but have the license from the Commonwealth of Virginia that allows them to work with those children fantastic thank you I had a question about the the teacher cadets I saw the numbers of the teacher cadets that that came to Loudoun how big is the program how many of them are we losing and where are they going how many teacher cadets are we losing well we started in 2017 18

[00:39:55] again we probably get roughly just doing rough math in my head about 50% of them to sign the letter of intent with us of that 50% then we get this past year was 23% of that 100. But again, we know that of that 100, some of them deferred. Maybe they didn't have a successful college yet, and they still need a little bit more time to finish, or they're in a master's program, and they're going to graduate with a master's, and then come back and teach for us. So one of the members of the recruiting team, that's one of his main focus. Our job is to keep

[00:40:32] in touch with all of those teacher cadets. Again, connecting them with current LCPS employees, who are what we call our cadet advisors, asking them questions, how are you doing, are you ready to come back, this is what you need to be thinking about, getting your resume together, those types of things and having those connections. That's excellent. So it's not necessarily the case that if half of them are coming back immediately, it's not necessarily the case that the other half are losing them to other places, but there's other explanations. Thank you. And then on slide 44, This is going to be a stupid question, so bear with me.

[00:41:09] But your attrition statistics, what is the percentage of? Like for licensed 21-22, 8.23% of what? 8% of? So that's of the total of the positions in that category.

[00:41:25] So for example, so if I look at the 23-24 data, so that 6.89% is made up of 520 teachers leaving or licensed employees leaving out of a total of 7753 does that make sense and then um if you look at the 9.61 for classified 426 out of 4562 left for some you know resigned or retired and then

[00:41:59] administrative that 7.94 is 65 out of 865 so remember earlier i referenced the smaller number so the 865 compared to 7753 in license can certainly skew our data a little bit that's very with small changes so the total that left out of the entire base of employees last year was 1011 out of 13 180. does that help it does yes thank you very i'm sure not good at math thank you very much happy to help my my only other it's not exactly a question but i i found

[00:42:38] the the breakdown um the information that you've provided with breakdowns of gender and race ethnicity for incoming staff and and current staff very helpful uh and i am curious if at some point is that data available for leadership positions here like principals assistant principals things like things of that nature not that I want to know what it's it's the the few

[00:43:13] slides after we did all the license slides so if you look at slides any slide that refers to administrative it doesn't call them out by principal or assistant principal but they're in that larger umbrella of that of that employee group but that would also include central office supervisors coordinators directors so it's part of a larger group they're just not called kind of like we call licensed employees that's teachers as school counselors it's librarians it's IFT's you know so on and so forth what administrators are yeah there's a lot of positions there but that's that's where that data number 33 slide it

[00:43:53] starts on 33 thank you I missed that definition of administrative thank you very much absolutely thank you that's all I had yes miss Chandler thank you madam chair and thank you to the HRTD team for such a comprehensive report it is fascinating to see how we've made progress over time and to sort of be able to follow the trends I really wanted to commend you for tying this data to student data I think it's really important that we offer representation to our population which is wonderfully diverse and although I

[00:44:30] understand that change is going to take time I think since 2017 we've made some great inroads there and we know that that matters a lot for students and it's also something that I hear from constituents quite a bit in fact I had responded to a request today related to this data and I'm probably gonna just send this presentation right over so thank you for that I also found it interesting to look at the data related to the post pandemic environment and and I'm happy to see overall I would it looks like we're stabilizing and that

[00:45:04] that seems to be a very positive indicator so thank you thank you mr. Chandler just real quick is this is this a slide deck going to the board the school board so as part of the committee updates that we send to the school board the link to this presentation will be available to them yes and of course they have the ability to check on the meeting notes and this presentation will be available under the HRT committee's agenda so we're not having another

[00:45:43] presentation because it's 49 slides. No, ma'am. We only bring it to committee and we share it with the board. I did want to mention, I appreciate the slides on the diversity, ethnicity, and race, but I found it a little repetitive. You know, you could probably cut down some of those slides and maybe put all the stats in one page, possibly. It's kind of a long presentation, and I really felt it was a little repetitive. But I did have a question on the substitutes. Was that number always higher than the number, like so much higher than the number of teachers? So we have worked

[00:46:23] many years to not just increase our substitute pool, but really work through having our substitutes pick up jobs. We have always struggled. We have always had a significantly high number of employees that are hired to pick up substitute jobs but we have struggled to get those individuals to routinely pick up roles and so because of that we have implemented a number of initiatives but because of that we continue to ensure that that pool is expansive so that we can ensure

[00:47:03] that jobs are picked up. Thank you Ms. Bowman. Also as far as the teacher cadets I think of TA's you know I think of a lot of these teachers are by themselves and they'd like teacher assistance I've mentioned also and and you you touch on it a little bit as far as the cadets from the high school as Miss Chandler mentioned tapping into our own our own kit our own students to maybe help out in the classroom if they're at a high school nearby to an elementary school or a

[00:47:42] middle school I mean am I am I getting that from this presentation that we're we're gonna have more of that and they would be considered cadets or TAs can you clarify for me sure as part of the teacher cadet class as a senior you are allowed to go be an assistant teaching assistant in a field or a classroom usually it's nearby the feeding elementary school or the middle school as part of your practicum as a teacher cadet so and they're you know there are some requirements

[00:48:18] that they have to address appropriately and sign you know know that data and what happens in the classroom is confidential and stuff like that so but they do get that experience as a senior as as part of the teacher cadet program so and as those numbers hopefully go up with the removal of the barriers that the former administration and the CTE put in place and now are gone.

[00:48:42] We're hopefully we'll get more of those. Did you say that are gone or you just? The barriers are gone. The barriers are gone. Correct. Okay. All right. Right. There used to be an application process for and for a sophomore in high school. Yeah. What do I want to do with my life?

[00:48:59] And having them fill out an application to be take to teacher cadet class to us in recruiting and for filling our jobs in the future, to us, didn't seem prudent. So we changed that process working with the new Dr. Grubbs, who's the new director of CTE, to remove those barriers.

[00:49:19] So there's no other CTE class that had that barrier. So, again, equity, right? We're making them apply to be teachers, but we're not making them apply to take Woodshop or any of the other CTE classes. Why? So, again, that's what we removed. So hopefully we'll see those numbers go up.

[00:49:34] And in fact, some of our middle schools have started doing a lot more career stuff with Dr. Grubbs in place. So we've already started attending some of the career days at the middle schools. We were just at Sterling and Seneca Ridge this past week to talk to those kids who may be interested in taking teacher cadet as a class when they get to high school.

[00:49:59] Thank you. Any more discussion? Yes, Ms. Chandler. Thanks, Madam Chair. I just, if we could go back to that new higher growth, slide five, I probably could find this if I looked quickly, but just very generally, could you tell me approximately how many employees we have versus how many substitutes we have?

[00:50:22] So we have approximately a little more than 13,000 employees. All of those are not eligible positions for substitutes. I would say teacher-wise, now other positions other than teachers are available for substitutes.

[00:50:40] Teacher-wise, we have a little over 7,000, and for substitutes, we have approximately 4,000. Thank you. No, that's very helpful. I mean, as a former substitute, I've certainly substituted for teaching positions and TA positions and special education positions, but it is helpful to remember that even though we're hiring quite a large number of substitutes every year, they're still very high demand because of the number of roles that need to be served.

[00:51:10] And I can't say enough about the teacher cadet program. My daughter, who's a sophomore, is an educator's rising and volunteers every week in an elementary school. She's definitely on that teacher pathway and also teaches at the lab school at her high school with the preschool.

[00:51:27] So it's great that we have so many opportunities for kids to explore, and hopefully we'll be able to bring them back to Loudoun to continue supporting our division. Can I just add one additional thing, too, about substitutes, something important to keep in mind?

[00:51:44] A large number of our substitutes are also college students, and so those individuals would only be available when they were back home on breaks. And so we have to accommodate for that in our numbers as well.

[00:52:02] So they wouldn't be long-term because then they go back to school. That's correct. They could not be a long-term sub. I'm going to add a second thing. So when you look at the number on slides four and five, that number is a gigantic number, but it also includes trainees.

[00:52:20] So it's substitutes, but it's also when we hire bus drivers, we hire them as trainees. When we hire school nutrition workers, we hire them as trainees. When we hire some custodians, so that 1569 looks like a really big number, and a really big portion is substitutes for substitute teachers.

[00:52:35] So don't misunderstand, but also within that big number are some of those other positions. So just kind of keep that in mind as well. Again, the lion's share are substitute teachers, but it does include some other positions as well. And I'll just add one quick third thing.

[00:52:56] On a daily for subs, we average about 900 to 1,000 subs a day that we have to fill on an average. So it's a lot. If I may ask, what is the process? You know, when I was growing up, my mother was substituting.

[00:53:12] She'd get a call in the morning, like, I don't know, 5 o'clock in the morning or something. Who does that, and what is your process for that, to get these people rolling so we can get them into school? Thank goodness for technology. We have, most of the time, it's through a text message through the SmartFind program.

[00:53:29] People can opt to still get a phone call, but most of them use the text message feature. That's part of the SmartFind program now. So they'll get a text, hey, when you want to sub here, or they can go online, and my older daughter was a sub and she would come home for breaks and she would go on the computer and pick the dates and where she wants to work.

[00:53:49] So there's an open portal through the website too. No more phone call at five o'clock in the morning from the principal. Can you come in and cover for me? I was actually thinking about the sick teacher at five o'clock in the morning that calls in and then you have to put it out there to find somebody to replace.

[00:54:06] Not an easy job, not an easy task to find somebody to replace the day of. And a teacher may call last minute. I had a car accident on the way to school. Then, you know, my understanding is last meeting we had floating substitutes.

[00:54:21] So you do have floaters in the school. Every school. They're called site-based subs. Correct. They go to the school every day and then fill in those jobs for the teacher who did call in sick last minute or their child got sick and they have to stay home.

[00:54:37] but no one picked up that job because it was in too late or it's a high demand day or those types of things. And then the principal or the admin team would then take one of their assigned site based subs and say, okay, you have to go cover for the Jones classroom today. Tomorrow, oh, no one's, you're going to be covering for a year. So they have the discretion at the school to do that. And I know, it is my understanding with some schools, believe it or not, sometimes all the teachers show up and the floaters aren't needed and they're hanging out at the school.

[00:55:13] Do they do other jobs, you know, if that's the case? What would they do exactly if they're not needed? So depending on the school, for example, they may cover if a teacher, one of the teachers is a mentor and they want to go see their mentee teach a lesson and there's full coverage and everyone came to work that day. So they may go cover that class while that teacher is going to observe their mentee teaching which is part of their stipend that they get they may support in administrative staff we've got a big event coming and Henrietta Lacks they might need to do all the

[00:55:52] name tags and everything else that went on with that whole dedication ceremony or they could be doing recess helping support and supervise students at recess or in the cafeteria so there's lots of things but they they're not just sitting around they did they definitely get utilized by the schools for a lot of different responsibilities but their first responsibility is subbing they need to sub first so we did have when we first put that in place we did have some principals who did not do that but we made it clear to them that they have to use the site-based subs as a substitute

[00:56:30] if you have an opening only if you don't have any openings you can put them in the other roles And this is my last question. What about shortages? What if, unexpectedly, you've had more teachers call out than normal, and you've only had, I don't know, two or three subs show up, but there's like five classes that need to substitute?

[00:56:53] that's a challenge. In an elementary classroom, they may collapse one classroom and put all of them into one other teacher's classroom for that particular day or part of the day. Middle school and high school, you have more flexibility because you have teachers who are on planning period.

[00:57:10] So they would cover a class on their planning period and we would compensate them through the time card system in Oracle. So they would get paid to cover a class if it's their planning period. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the presentation. Was there any other discussion? No? Okay. With that, I guess, any new business? No new business? I guess with that, we'll adjourn for today, and thank you so much for being here.

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