Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Performance Monitoring Committee Meeting, Thursday, February 5, 2026

Date: Thursday, February 5, 2026
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 59m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1162288035?rel=0

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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] okay good afternoon everybody I'd like to call this February 5th 2026 meeting of the performance monitoring committee to order my name is Amy Riccardi and I'm the chair of the committee I'm joined by miss Chandler and miss Chernoff and we appreciate everybody's presence today I'm really looking forward to this conversation with the budget work sessions and other committees we adjusted the first PMC meeting to up 2026 to today our regular meeting time is going to be this third Wednesday of the month second now that's right second

[00:00:38] Tuesday I know indeed it did indeed it will be the first Tuesday of each month from 6 to 7 p.m. but that will start in March and we will have another meeting later this month for the February agenda so this is really the jet the January agenda that we're working on today before we proceed I don't think do we have it we don't have anybody here for public comment no public comment so we need to move it will can move into 3.0 which is approval of the minutes we have

[00:01:15] two sets of minutes that need to be approved today from the December 8th 2025 meeting has everybody had a chance to take a look at those or any corrections or additions to it if there's no objections or corrections and I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the December 8th meeting just a second it just makes a motion go for it I move that we approve the draft minutes from December 8th to 2025 second great thank you so it's been

[00:01:53] properly moved and seconded are there all those in favor aye aye aye it's been properly moved and seconded and the meetings have meeting minutes from the December 8th meeting have been approved and then we'll move on to 3.02 which is the approval of the December 9th 2025 meeting minutes have we had a chance to to take a look at those and review them if there are no objections or corrections then I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes from December 9th I move to approve the draft minutes of the December 9th 2025 PMC meeting

[00:02:31] second all those in favor say aye aye the minutes from the December 9th yeah December 9th 2025 meeting minutes have been approved thank you so we'll begin the agenda is in front of us we're going to be looking at the PMC roadmap and the HRTD presentation on staffing, recruiting, and retention. Are there any adjustments

[00:02:59] to the agenda before we get started? All right, then we'll move into 4.0. Yep, there we go, the information items. The first item is 4.01, Department of Academics, the PMC roadmap 2026 presentation by Dr. Anna Signal, Supervisor of Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement.

[00:03:26] The floor is yours. Wonderful. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Riccardi and board members. This afternoon, we would like to engage in a conversation with you around mapping our conversation for PMCs together. We go to the next slide.

[00:03:43] Our outcome for today is to determine the structure, sequence, and flow of topics for upcoming PMC meetings. As in the years past, we collaboratively determined what the topics would be and created a sequence. On the next slide, we have two questions for discussion for you in thinking about the structure and the flow of topics.

[00:04:04] The first question, reflecting on the PMC meetings, how well did the structure support your ability to engage in meaningful discussion and make informed decisions? might there be a chance or a change you would recommend with the structure and just for those of you who were not with us last last year the structure would usually be goal one student achievement presentation we would have a presentation from a school to showcase how the topic was implemented and then one of the three other goals where we presented to go to go three or or a goal

[00:04:40] for and so the board created a sequence of topics and today we would like to hear what your priorities are and some specific themes you would like to hear so the second question that we have there for discussion is as we plan for the year ahead how would you like the flow of topics across our meetings to be structured are there specific themes priority areas or timing considerations that you would like us i'd like to see reflected in the sequence of topics throughout the year on On the next slide, we have the roadmap from last year, just to jot your memory.

[00:05:16] And so with that, I think focusing on those two questions, I would like to turn it over back to you, Chair Riccardi, for discussion. Great. Thank you so much. So is there any thoughts on that? And we want to hear them.

[00:05:35] That's good. Yeah, go for it. Thank you, Chair Riccardi. I am, Ms. Engel, I am very excited to get back to work and to be continuing the work on PMC. it has I think we've really grown into a really great cadence I really appreciate that we've made the shift of going away from just rotating through all the goals to having that goal one student focus for every meeting and then sort of having a subset goal underneath that worked well for the committee before it's something I would like to see the student data at the forefront I

[00:06:09] can imagine that others might as well I also really appreciated the fall topics and feel like every single one of them could be something that we sort of cycle back to here towards the end of the year in spring.

[00:06:27] That might make things simple, and I don't want to minimize what anybody else wants to see, but I particularly think some of the impactful conversations we had around VLA and the data for VALS in terms of grades 4 through 8 that was somewhat alarming in terms of it being our first go and really seeing where those gaps are, particularly for our middle schoolers, I think is something we need to keep a tight eye on, especially as we look to evaluate the processes that we will be implementing as this is a new assessment.

[00:07:03] Additionally, I am seeing some incredible work, which sort of piggybacks off of that in terms of the MTSS implementation with the FLEX model at the middle school level, particularly some things going on at Blue Ridge Middle School.

[00:07:19] What's happening at Sterling Middle School is just really incredible, what they're doing with their master schedule, which kind of piggybacks off some of the conversations that we had had in CNI with changing some of those structures with the master schedule. And I felt like that marriage of the two across the committees has really strengthened that work in our schools and empowered principals really to have that flexibility to meet the needs of their students.

[00:07:44] And just in those two models, there's such diversity across our county, and that's a really just good example of two very diverse groups of students that are having their needs met in very unique ways. The structure mirrors itself, but the way that they're meeting needs is very different. So I would love to see more about that.

[00:08:02] I know that Trailside is also doing some really interesting work around FLEX. So that would be something I would like to see as we pair it with what's going on with VALS. Obviously, the EL data and some of the SPED data that we have had in the past, I think those on a cyclical cycle make sense for us as well in terms of the different structures.

[00:08:25] And particularly in terms of some of the budget decisions that were made, in terms of some of the staffing shifts that were going to happen at EL and then with the SPED mentors. I would really love to see some of that follow-on data and just some of how we plan to use those positions and how that will roll out. And then lastly, the discipline data was particularly interesting to me as well, and the racial slurs and hate speech tied into that.

[00:08:48] Again, just as we're going to go towards the second cycle of data here, I think some of that MTSS is really important and vowels, but then maybe towards the end of the year looking at how do we do in terms of the discipline data and as well as some of the racial slurs and hate speech as we look at trends across.

[00:09:07] So those were some things that I felt like our fall was really robust, and we had some really great conversations. I don't want those to end in the fall. That's sort of the kickoff, and then, you know, to really see how that wraps up towards the end of the year. So that would be my thoughts. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone.

[00:09:26] I'm very excited to join this team and dig in to see, again, how we're serving our students and what we can do to improve that service. I am very much in support of all of the topics that are on the fall roadmap.

[00:09:41] resonate with me I would very much be in support of seeing them again I'm very curious and I'm feeling the loss of board docs right now because I'd love to see what the beginning of the roadmap looks like in 25 - right but one thing that I know I would really like to dig into is special education and what timelines I guess asking the question if we're meeting the timelines that we're

[00:10:07] supposed to be meeting in terms of our IEP and 504 services well I'm really excited about all this data too and I'm a you some of you may know I'm a real data wonk and my professional background is really in human capital so this whole conversation is going to be fascinating and I'm really excited about this committee's work I think and I share this with dr. Ellis I think one of the things I would love to be able to do as an outcome hopefully in the next couple

[00:10:46] of months is start potentially building out a school board dashboard with key metrics and data that are going to be really interesting for the school board to kind of keep an eye on to kind of give us kind of the health of the health of the division in in aggregating some of the data that's already been presented over this last year and kind of figuring out what is useful to the other committees and other members of the school board and getting it at that real strategic level so there may be some things that need to be done you know that we want to dive down into but it'd really be it'd be great if we could

[00:11:24] come up with some kind of dashboard model that gives us the key you know key metrics about the health of the different departments within the division so some of the ones that we mentioned here I think would be really great to be able to take a look at and that maybe some also as well on the operational side of things just so that at a really high level we got it we're getting ready to get a presentation on the quarterly budget so there's some things up there that I think would be helpful too but I would really lean on you all to kind of help us craft you know in these presentations like what are the key metrics if you were to roll up your presentations at a strategic level what are the key metrics you think we really need be paying attention to in

[00:12:03] order to help guide the division from a strategic perspective that's just a personal thing I may be again the only one on the school board and that may happen often that wants to see that but I think from a strategic perspective and driving the board initiatives, I think that would be really helpful.

[00:12:22] Thank you, Chair Riccardi. So we really appreciate all that feedback, and I don't think that you're the only one, at least if you include staff, who is excited about that. We're kind of strategic planning nerds over here, and I'm making a connection between what you were saying to the development of the strategic plan and thinking through how we are going to transparently track the metrics of the strategic plan and so I'm really excited that that you all are interested in the concept of a school board dashboard and and tracking those metrics and data and I think

[00:13:01] we can certainly address all of the topics that you all have shared the one thing that I would add is I would point out in November we spoke about the program evaluation schedule for this year that is one thing that we highly recommend come through this committee before it goes to the full board so you three have an opportunity to have insight into the programs that our team will evaluate in the coming year and then also have an opportunity to preview program evaluations conducted this year so we will we are in the process just beginning the process of listing out

[00:13:38] topics for the 26 27 school year those topics that we think should be evaluated we will bring that to you all for discussion and feedback so just pointing that out, that that'll be looped into these conversations. And I think it's connected to all of the things that you already shared. So if it's okay with the committee, we will take these ideas back and create a draft roadmap similar, and then, Ms. Riccardi, you and I can take a look at that and make sure it reflects your discussion.

[00:14:06] That'd be great. I'm really excited. You guys, I like geeking out on data, so definitely my wheelhouse. So, yeah, I'm definitely in my good place. Yeah, it's good. 51 slides are made. Yeah. Yeah. And I would just say this. I did note that when we were meeting. Yeah. It's a lot of data for an hour meeting, but I'm looking forward to it. I would just say this. I'm very much a kind of a big picture down to the details person, just generally how I operate. So I like kind of understanding what the big picture is first and then drill down when I have questions.

[00:14:42] So I think from a board perspective, that's also a really great way. I know some of us want to dive into some specific details, and I think that's great. But from a board governance perspective, I think having that strategy is the big picture is great. All right, so we can move along to, we are at 4.02, Department of Human Resources and Talent Development, which is goal number two, staffing, recruiting, and retention, presented by Christopher Bennett, Executive Director of Human Resources and Talent Development, and Robert Phillips, Director of Human Resources and Talent Development.

[00:15:16] The floor is yours. Thanks. All right, thank you. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I know Ms. Chandler had the pleasure of hearing this last year. So what Bob and I have done is we've pared this down to be 30 slides.

[00:15:35] So, you know, we're not going to do 51. We're going to do 30 of the 51, but we're going to hit the high points. And we're also going to be, at the end, if there's any questions on the slides, that we are going to skip over. We're going to skip over the ones that have more subtle nuances, that dig a little bit deeper into the data, so we're going to try to hit the high point.

[00:15:57] So hopefully that works, but again, we're happy to answer questions about anything in this report. Are all of the slides, though, in the deck? All the slides are in the deck. The entire comprehensive packet is what's uploaded to BoardDoc, so everything's available, but we figured in the interest of the meeting, we'll hit the high point.

[00:16:12] So, of course, we root all of our work in Goal 2, exemplary staff, where we definitely want to cultivate a high-performing team of professionals. So, all of our work in HRTD is rooted in that. And then the other thing I want to root us in is a couple of definitions.

[00:16:29] Some of you have been on the board, kind of probably have heard this before. Those newer to the board, maybe not as much. But we define a couple different things. We define a school year, which is pretty straightforward, a fiscal year or a school year, as July 1st through June 30th. We also define what we call a hiring year as October 1st through September 30th of the following year.

[00:16:51] And we do that because September 30th aligns very nicely with the student data collection where we say this is the number of students we have. It kind of marks and represents the end of our recruiting season for that particular school year. So the very bottom one is what this report is primarily showing you, that 25-26.

[00:17:11] So when we talk about things like attrition, those people who have left us, we're using that July 1, 2025 to June 30 of 2026. And then what we're also talking about is October 1st of 2024, so literally more than a year ago, through this past September 30th.

[00:17:29] So again, just kind of framing, that's where we're rooted in this data, Phillips. This kind of gives you a snapshot of the categories of which we hired last year. We hired over 4,000 individuals last year across licensed, classified, administrative, part-time.

[00:17:48] Most of these categories, actually all of these categories except part-time, have shown increases over the prior year. We went up a total of 330 in substitutes. The rest of them are fairly fixed year over year.

[00:18:05] substitutes we made a concerted effort to drive up our number of substitutes so we had a strong substitute pool so that number went up the largest amount year over year and then here we go so here you kind of see three years of trend data you can see our trends are going upward and then this is separated out across all of the different categories so again it kind of gives you a nice visual of the areas and where we're seeing that growth slowly over the last several years we've seen substitutes increasing. License has been pretty fixed for the last three years at that

[00:18:41] 770 range, somewhere in that general range. We're fairly fixed. We're seeing a little bit of an increase in classified, so teacher assistants, bus drivers, and so forth. But again, this kind of gives you a nice visual of where we've been going over the last three years. As Chris mentioned, we're going to skip over a couple slides and go to the licensed new hires, which is slide number eight and on this slide we utilize the information that we collect about where our teachers come from to target our recruiting efforts so you can see these

[00:19:16] are the top 12 schools of our 775 licensed hires from last year where they receive their bachelor's or undergraduate degree or last thing excuse me last school attended in that regard so again all of these schools are except one are in the Commonwealth of Virginia and over the course of the last four years in terms of analyzing this data we have really narrowed down our focus on our journeys that we take on the recruiting trail to really look at those schools that are producing for us where are we getting people and then one of the

[00:19:53] things that does occur for us when we do go on the road trying to count up the number of people that are going to need we're going to need help on at those particular fairs so making sure that we have enough staff available to handle the amount of people were hiring at those fairs so that's kind of what we do with that particular data just one note we did hire this past year 33 licensed new hires from out of country who have a international degree this was their undergraduate similar data in terms of those very similar trends mostly all

[00:20:29] schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia for their undergrad again we did have Maryland and Shepherd which are not in our Commonwealth but all the other states Penn State another big recruiting hub for us when we go to the Penn State Fair that's another targeted area that we pull from teachers unfortunately they're with some of their political changes in terms of paying student teachers to stay in state which is something that I'm hoping that Virginia Commonwealth can model there we're getting less teachers from Pennsylvania schools because they're paying the next slide is the postgraduate so if they got a master's

[00:21:08] degree and we hired them this past year this is where we got their wishes where they got that we have a lot of partnerships as you can see from George Mason it's proximity as well as our special ed cohort partnerships as well and we have a couple PDS schools here in the in Loudoun County in our division So we have a strong partnership with them and that's where we get a lot of those.

[00:21:29] This slide is representing our teacher graduates or excuse me, LCPS graduates who come back to teach for us. This is self-reported. We do ask these questions when we're hiring them and everything. But just to kind of give you an idea, we did bring back nearly 20% of all of our new staff were LCPS grads, which is favorable for us. We like that. They know the community. They know our expectations and we try to market that.

[00:21:59] And we have a couple programs that we're going to talk about through the slide deck as well. And one of those programs is the teacher cadets. So we have nearly 15 more teacher cadets than we did last year that we hired and brought back.

[00:22:16] And I know some of you were on the board, but our grow our own pipeline is increasing. We are now seeing the fruits of our labor from 2020 when we first gave out those letters of intent to our graduating seniors who were in teacher or going into teacher programs they're now coming back and starting to teach more and more for us so we're very excited by that and then one of the other things were very excited about you that's that's the number 57 that are coming back to us so we do keep track of that as well as the number of graduates so we kind of compare what we got so those are both

[00:22:54] rising and then this is a slide that is very important for us these are the number of students who are enrolled in the teacher cadet programs in Loudoun County high schools so that is going up we're very we are working very closely with the CTE leadership to break down the barrier so children or students can get into the program when they have that inkling that they may want to teach and we had some barriers in place so we removed all those barriers and now we're getting more and more teacher cadets they are rebranding it for teachers for tomorrow or teachers yeah teachers for tomorrow is it going to be is their new acronym so just so

[00:23:31] that's that's coming from the CTE so I think this is back to you Chris I think yes I think this is back to me so we're gonna skip over slides 15 through 17 and we're gonna jump back in with slide 18 and so what we also look at is where are our candidates coming from so not only are they coming from teacher cadets current students but we also look every year what was the last experience of our incoming cohort of new licensed employees so of our 775 teachers you can see only half of them were new yes that's a large amount but we have a huge pipeline of our substitute

[00:24:11] pool that comes and becomes teachers we have a very large pool out of our classified employees so and with a lot of the new programs that we're doing to help career switchers to help TAs become teachers and so forth that's an absolute pocket for us to look at how do we grow the next crop of educators how do we continue to grow our own so this for us is important data that we look at every year this is another set of data that we look at what this is showing you so each year we sort of we make a determination based on attrition trends based on what we expect of

[00:24:49] growth or in some cases a reduction in ftes in our budget and we make a determination of every year of the number of teachers or licensed staff we feel we can hire early so when we're out on the road we're recruiting right now we may not know exactly where every one of those teachers is going to go so what we look at is all the trend data and we make a determination what we call them is early fte releases this is back when we used to actually release ftes but what this tells us is who we can go and get how many were comfortable hiring and so for this past year it was 372

[00:25:23] and of those 372 we made 222 offers so we attempted to issue early letters of intent to 222 individuals but this is again just trying to show the trend the upward trend of how many we feel that we can go out and hire early this ultimately of the 222 that we offered 120 of them signed and are currently with lcps in teaching and licensed positions and that's the distribution of what we do we look at each specific area of what we feel comfortable with of course if it's a more specialized area we're not going to offer as many letters of intent

[00:26:03] for things like elementary and special education we're going to offer or be willing to offer a lot more so that at least gives you a snapshot of the distribution of who we did hire early through our letters of intent feel me again this is a kind of showing that snapshot of where our people are coming from so of our student teachers this past year this current school year we hired 31 of our student teachers again looking at who are our pipeline of candidates for our teaching positions so

[00:26:39] that represented an increase so that each year we've been showing a nice steady increase in how many we're hiring that 31 represents about 54 of our total teachers and training tnts or student teachers we were able to get back into licensed positions our next slide is going to show you the fact that we have a large number almost 90 percent of our student teachers in 24 25 are currently working for us they're not all in teaching positions so some of them stayed on as substitutes you can see 41 percent stayed as substitutes we netted 41 percent as teachers and then they're

[00:27:18] in various other positions might be TAs might be I mean only 10% are not employed with us so in some form or fashion we managed to keep again that number that number is 67 so 67 we managed to keep that we're in they were student teachers for us the prior year so again these are things that we all track and monitor that tells us we've got a large chunk of those employees still working for us that could eventually move into teaching positions

[00:27:48] Could I interject one thing in regards to student teachers the school board supported our policy last year and changing that so that when if a student teacher is doing 400 hours of an internship in Loudon and is hired within the one year of when that internship ended they will get credit on the salary scale to move up to step two as another recruiting incentive for our student teachers getting them all those good ones to stay and we've been marketing that one of the members of my recruiting team has been marketing that to all of the sending colleges and universities saying, hey, we're giving you credit, come do your student teaching with us.

[00:28:25] Anything we can do to keep our fill rate as high as it is. This just gives you a snapshot of how many offers we make to the acceptances. So about 82% of the offers that we make for licensed positions were accepted of that 775.

[00:28:42] You can see we only had 175 is a large number, but the fact that we get almost 82% of those that we offer certainly guides our work and drives us to let us know as Bob mentioned earlier if we're going to the right places if we're netting candidates from certain colleges and universities and it drives our recruiting activity this is back to you so this is skipping to right now we're gonna be skipping a lot of demographic slides just to really highlight the key component ones that we felt would be prudent for our discussion so you know obviously every year we our

[00:29:21] goal in in terms of moving the needle in terms of matching our teaching and licensed demographics with those of our students so our students can see representation in their schools in their community and in their classrooms so we keep close eyes on that and this is what it looks like this past year after our hiring season ended on October or on September 30th in comparison to the students for all employees and then the next slide takes a little bit deeper dive as well as a longitudinal longitudinal dive about how we are continuing to hire teachers of color we're increasing the proportion of teachers of color

[00:30:00] throughout every single year in 2017 we started training with administrators in 2020 we started more intensive training about how to mitigate bias during interview practices and we've seen a growth of this is only going back four years but if you were to go back 2020 it would be over 40% increase in the number of teachers of color represented throughout Loudoun County Public Schools so we're very proud of that the next slide talks about licensed new hires so every year we compare our license pool who we hired this year versus who we

[00:30:35] hired the past previous years again trying to make sure we're not leaving out groups or not targeting groups too much so this is that again a very similar for your total you could see it's about a from last year to this year was about a four point two percent increase so we again that's one thing we do keep track of earlier on mr. Bennett talked about the number of people we actually hired these are actually the number of people that we actually apply to all of the jobs that we have in Loudoun County Public Schools not including substitutes not including coaches but our license classified and administrative roles over

[00:31:13] seventeen thousand right now our system does not have the ability to screen out people who aren't qualified we know we're moving to a new system over the course of the next three years with ai we're hoping that will be something that will help us to really get the qualified candidates in the pools faster right now that is more of a manual process than it is an automatic so that's one of the benefits that we're hoping that will come for that is this me or you 37 this is still me great this is our yearly comparison so you can see our applications have gone up from

[00:31:49] last year's nearly 15,000 to this year to 17,800 so we're very excited the deeper the pools my background is in business and economics I come from the supply side of economics the deeper we can make our pools of candidates the better off that we're going to be the tougher the choices when we're hiring people the better off we're going to be and then most of the time if a candidate doesn't get selected for one job they'll get selected or picked up by another school because many of our candidates do apply to multiple schools particularly we're looking for licensed positions this is slide 41 we look at the

[00:32:26] percentage of applicants hired in each of our demographic or EEOC reportable groups so again we're looking for trans is is any group overrepresented or in when we're doing our hiring and then we talk about that and we talk about that with our hiring managers again you know statistically anything over a 10% difference could make but but some of these groups are very small considering the number of Hispanic candidates that we have a hiring of 5 to 10 could make a significant change so but that's what we do look at turn it back to Chris for

[00:33:03] trition so basically what we're showing here and this is something we look at every year is our attrition trend so how many of our people are leaving you can see overall in the last three years we have been lowering we've been reducing every year the only difference where we have not been coming down is in administrative and some of the reasoning there is that's a much smaller pool so if i look at this proportionally my administrative pool is 865 people for this past year where the licensed one was 7752 so there is so simple math is going to

[00:33:39] give us a greater potential for variance. But overall, we're pleased with our downward trends in attrition. And then these next two slides are going to sort of show you actual raw numbers for both retirements and resignations. We're going to give three years worth, of course, across license, classified, and administrative to go along with that attrition data. So you can see things are coming down. Again, there's a blip with administrative. It was up last year. But overall, our trends are pretty much trending downward in both retirements and then ahead and go to the next slide as well as with resignations where we're seeing downward trends

[00:34:17] so again favorable favorable for us so we know we're continuing um in that positive direction this is something we also look at every year this guides our work with new early career teachers you can see i mean pretty clearly where we're losing teachers i mean this is um it's known you lose them in the first in the first three to five years so these are areas that kind of help us target in you can see there are downward trends here so it's favorable but still those are the early years

[00:34:53] once we get beyond it's an interesting blip three years ago on step 16 i don't know what really explains that but that was an interesting it was an it was an out interesting outlier but again it's it's things are going in the right direction but this lets us know what we need to target we need to really target those early career no no no covid if we went back yes that would have been a spike that would have been a spike probably up a little higher with those eligible to retire so go ahead and then this what we also track every year is trying to get a sense of where

[00:35:31] where people are going so you can see with license these what we're giving you is the top five reasons the majority of our people are leaving for either relocation or personal reasons we do track again this is self-reported so we ask if someone leaves to go to another division are you going to fairfax are you going to any of our neighbors so you can see across the bottom of this chart we do ask and we do track what they what they've told us if they went to fairfax they went to arlington and so forth so we did lose employees to other divisions and that's in the licensed realm you can see with classified the larger ones again are that family personal

[00:36:08] relocation sometimes people don't want to disclose they don't have to disclose and then with administrative it's it's similar where they're again we're talking smaller numbers the variance is different so i think do we have one oh that's it so we are happy see we did it we are happy to answer any questions about any of the slides thank you guys so much for this is really great um do you have any questions thoughts um thank you so much for the presentation it's exciting to revisit

[00:36:43] this data after a brief like reprise it is so interesting to me especially when we really are looking at our community and I was very excited to see the teachers for tomorrow data and I just wanted to confirm again you said we didn't do the signing with the letters of intent until 2020 that was your one that was your one correct ultimately 2024 2025 is really that first year that teacher from that program could have been coming back correct yeah we had some last year some do a master's program give them six years when they sign the

[00:37:23] letter they have six years because we know some Commonwealth schools have a one-year program others have a two-year program if they're going out of state they could have a two-year program so we don't tie them down to that specific four or five years we say six years so and we have one recruiter who kind of keeps in touch with them uh throughout their college uh progression now nice if they answer email it's nice but we're starting to get more to instagram and snapchat messages with them email is not their preferred method of communication as i've learned from my own children

[00:38:01] um it's nice that you're considering innovating um i will be pleased to continue to watch how that program grows over time. I think it's a really valuable investment for LCPS. I was also very heartened to see the committed work and improvement that you've made in terms of hiring more teachers who have identities that reflect the students that we serve. We know that's very important in terms of belonging and academic engagement, and I'm very pleased to see how that has grown over time although it was notable in the 51 slide packet there are still some

[00:38:38] areas where we could improve especially perhaps for some of our API communities could you tell me a little bit about what you do to prioritize that in terms of recruiting sure so the slide that you saw that had our top 12 schools that's not just where we go we have over 60 some trips recruiting trips that we attend as well as hosting six or seven of our own job fairs virtual on zoom events which is our platform we have another one next week on Thursday so

[00:39:11] that's where we go many of those other colleges are HBC use or MSI's and again we look at the data very carefully in terms of how many teachers they are producing how many special ed elementary depending on what their forte is in terms of those universities and then we go and recruit with those universities bringing typically we bring a principal on the road with us depending on the school as well as maybe if we need more hands on deck we could be an assistant principal if we don't get enough principals to sign up for

[00:39:48] those particular job fairs based upon based upon their numbers what we're finding is the HBCUs and MSIs are not producing teachers as robustly as we would hope for so that's why we're very happy with our alternate pathways programs in the commitment by the school board for our tuition initiative programs moving those support teachers classified assistants people with an associate's degree to a bachelor's degree in special education those were research shows that most teachers of color come from an alternate pathway so we're opening those alternate pathways for our teachers of color who are

[00:40:27] already working in our division that's great to hear yeah um in terms of male teachers are there opportunities for recruitment there as well i mean that is an area where we would lag absolutely yes yes absolutely we we have there i think one of the slides is gender if i'm not i think we just skipped it over so it you know any standard for the i will say this the if you look at our teacher cadet data the number of males taking teacher cadet class or teachers for tomorrow has grown because of the lack of the barriers that we've taken down over the last three years.

[00:41:01] So we're very excited by that. We do have another partnership with Longwood University. It's called Call Me Mister. It's for producing male African-American teachers mostly. So that's where we partner with them.

[00:41:18] And they come to our Educators Rising conference that we put on for our seniors every single year. Well, not every single year. They started last year. And they're going to come this year. In fact, this year, they're going to start visiting some schools. And some of our schools are hosting them to do, like, an assembly for some eighth graders as well as high school kids.

[00:41:37] So, yeah, we're trying to – we're trying. We've all been learning that reaching out on the career pathways matters earlier and earlier. And I promise this will be my last one. I mean, I have a lot. Yeah, thanks. So, in terms of the attrition, when teachers are leaving to go work in other areas, I'm wondering and would like to sort of explore that a little bit.

[00:42:04] In the past, we've had a discussion about how about 40% of our staff, licensed or not licensed, live outside of Loudoun. Is that still an accurate number? We would have to search that.

[00:42:19] I don't have that. That would have to come from Oracle data that we really don't track. Okay. I mean, it's one of the most rational reasons I find to explain why we often have a lot of snow days, right? Because you're not just looking at what's happening in your neighborhood, right?

[00:42:36] Correct. There are a lot of complexities around that, having teachers who don't necessarily live in the community for many, many reasons. But that is some information that I would appreciate having. And it would resonate with me if people were trying to just improve their commute.

[00:42:55] I think we probably have some teachers who may commute two hours each way. Yeah, I agree. I will say this, one thing that we've seen over the course of the last year and a half, going back to this time last year and then the last couple fairs that we've had here already internally, is the amount of teachers coming into Loudoun from neighboring divisions because we removed the cap on the years of experience.

[00:43:19] So that's been very beneficial for recruiting some veteran teachers who always thought about Loudoun and but maybe because they were capped at because they had 20 years in their current division and they would be going back to level 16 here or step 16 now that is gone that's a lot of that we've reaped a lot of benefits from that oh thank you for that clarification that's good news yes all right thank you okay um so always great stuff so just by the way on slide 47 with that 16 year spike we see that in the commercial space too and And especially with females.

[00:43:59] So I think it's a life thing. I think like it's around 40, right? Your kids may or may not be finishing school or you're into middle school, high school-ish age and you're needing to focus. We're finding a lot of female employees in the corporate space pull out of the workforce too.

[00:44:17] So it doesn't surprise me that you see that. I had to think about that a lot because I'm like, okay, what is that about? But then I'm thinking about that. That's like mid-career. Yep. And that's about when, you know, and this is a highly female workforce. So I think you're seeing that spike there is the same one we see in the commercial space, too.

[00:44:35] So it's interesting. So I just point that out. And then what it also then does is are there other ways that we can engage those employees in different types of work to accommodate a shift in time or commitment or whatever else?

[00:44:54] Like, are there other career pathways within the profession? Maybe moving to a substitute model or something. I don't know. It's an interesting thing, but we see that in the commercial space, too. We do offer employees who are full-time the ability to become a substitute on the voluntary separation form, the VSF.

[00:45:13] So they indicate whether they would still like to sub, and some of them do come back on more of an as-needed or part-time basis to accommodate their family needs or whatever is going on in their life at that time. So we do offer that. I guess the other question, too, is like re-engagement with them after a period of time.

[00:45:30] How many of them come back after, I don't know, four, three or four? I don't know if we will get that done either, but I'd be curious. No? Yeah, I would, no. You may not. I don't know. I mean, we do get a lot of people coming back after they've stayed home.

[00:45:46] It's not, right? I mean, right now, yesterday was the high water mark over the last six years. We are 99.45% fully staffed and licensed. We have 42 vacancies, which in this day and age in this area is amazing. So we're doing a lot of great things here to get licensed people in our classrooms, and we're very proud of that.

[00:46:06] In fact, when we presented in Nashville at a conference, like, they gave us a standing ovation. They clapped it, and they were like, wow, that's crazy. So we got a lot of good momentum going on here, and we have a new program coming out with the Office of Special Education for a grant.

[00:46:22] So hopefully that will help bring some of those numbers up for the special ed teachers. So we're trending in the positive direction. Well, having a district that's 100% minority majority, I guess one of my questions is, what are we doing to specifically look for instructors that are English learner teachers and or recruiting from a Latina population and or like a Southeast Asian population?

[00:46:48] Because those are all of our schools in Sterling are of one or the other. Yes, so right now we have a partnership with Participate Learning, which offers ambassador teachers, teachers from all over the country who have expressed an interest to work in Northern Virginia or Virginia itself.

[00:47:09] And we're up to 44 over the last two years, who majority of them are working in the Sterling area and are bilingual. Many of them from the Philippines, some from Africa, some from South America. Some of them are filling our DLI positions that we have at either Potomac or Sanders Corner.

[00:47:29] So we do have those and those principals who are actively engaged with us on the recruiting and staffing side have their own portal for these teachers and they can see and recruit them right from the portal.

[00:47:45] And for us in Loudoun, they're cost neutral because they don't take benefits with us. They take benefits from Participate Learning due to their international status. So the recruiting, the contract and all that stuff would make it cost neutral for us.

[00:48:03] So we try to push them out to our hiring managers as much as possible. Sometimes it falls on deaf ears. Sometimes they listen and they get after them. So we've had some success with that. And then this year, they're adding special education as they're piloting and partnering us with Loudon because they love the way that we do things in Loudon with hiring and staffing and supporting our new teachers with our instructional coaches and mentors and all that stuff.

[00:48:31] So they're actually, we're piloting their special ed program with Participate Learning on top of another international company we used to hire for special ed this past year. Thank you. And then also, I think the final one is like Title I, like hiring and placing in our Title I schools.

[00:48:48] What does that look like and how are we doing with that? A Title I school, I mean, to be a teacher, there's no special certification. They just have to be fully certified in elementary school. You know, one of the things that we always talk about is trying to prioritize for them to get in the field and hire as quickly as possible.

[00:49:12] Again, some principals do that very well in our Sterling area. Others don't. And the ones that do get the better candidates. And we try to reinforce that saying, hey, the candidates we're getting now, especially either from our own fairs or when we're on the road.

[00:49:30] We've already been on the road probably about 10 fairs now going back to November of this past fall. These are the cream of the crop. we're getting the rock stars that want to come to Loudoun and you should suck them up and bring them into your school as much as possible and trust us. We've gained a lot of trust over the last five years with the different people who we've hired on the recruiting team. So that's always been our message. Again, some principals, as soon as they see an LOI, we call them LOIs, as soon as they see an LOI in the pool, they're calling them. Others just sit back and wait and

[00:50:08] They're gone. I need I need an EL teacher. Well, we had 15 two weeks ago You should get active. So we just try to communicate that this is an active process If you don't mind up and ask miss Boland to jump in here because she and I have been talking with Miss Mitchell chief of schools and The principals of title one schools regarding some of their challenges recently with staffing and with the new TSI Applications I think we have an opportunity to really support those principles in hiring the best staff. Thank you doctor

[00:50:47] Sorry, I wasn't planning to speak, but just add What dr. Ellis says is 100% accurate we Talk to principals often about their challenges when it comes to staffing and staffing timelines being one of them and we do have a fair few over eager principals especially in title one schools that would like to start as soon as possible and their fellow principals that may not be title one are willing to help assist in that in that regard and so something that we've talked about is whether or not we would have principal

[00:51:26] support and i believe we do to allow for an earlier sort of limited timeline where we could post Title I specific jobs earlier and allow our Title I principals to hire first, whether it be from our internal transfers or our external LOIs or the external process, just giving them a little bit of a head start to where they get almost first dibs of the hiring process.

[00:51:59] And so we are looking at whether or not we could do a two-week earlier hiring process to where those jobs are posted at a minimum two weeks. This would be the first year we are doing that. And we are very grateful to the board that they did not revisit the boundary process because this was sort of hanging out there as to whether or not we were going to be able to do this.

[00:52:27] And we are able to do that. Additionally, when you speak to what are we doing for Title I, this was our second year that we were able to support hiring bonuses specific to special education, but also specific to Title I schools.

[00:52:45] And sign-on bonuses for those Title I schools, they stack. And so we give $2,000 for Gen Ed teachers, but if you're a Gen Ed teacher and you're going to a Title I school, you would get $4,000. And if you're a special education teacher going into a Title I school, again, you would get an additional $2,000, so you would get a $6,000 sign-on bonus.

[00:53:11] And we were able to continue that this year, and we do. It is in the fiscal year 27 budget. And in addition to that, we haven't taken this pause when we touch on it.

[00:53:29] Okay. Heads up. Okay. In addition to, yes, so Dr. Ellis put me on the spot for a minute here. So in policy for our internal transfers, the deadline for our internal transfers is June 15th.

[00:53:52] That coincides with another deadline, a critical deadline within the division and within code. After June 15th, we can no longer accept an individual, a teacher.

[00:54:10] I'm going to use an example. It's much easier. We could no longer hire a teacher after June 15th from a neighboring division that is under contract. That June 15th date is the deadline. So right now, our internal transfer process also ends June 15th.

[00:54:29] So we could have a Title I principal, and we often do, who loses an employee to the internal transfer process on June 14th. There is no way for them to post and hire prior to June 15th.

[00:54:49] And so we are looking at revisiting our policy to end the internal transfer process earlier, which would allow not just Title I principles, but that is who we see most harmed by this process, but to potentially visit a June 1st date.

[00:55:16] However, I say potentially and I say revisit because this would be a policy that we would have to go through a discussion with the union because this would impact our current licensed staff and that policies are negotiable and so I say possible and I say revisit because this has not gone through that process yet. Thanks for clarifying. That would be a really great thing. Did you want to add to it? Yeah.

[00:55:47] I know. Ms. Chandler and I have another meeting that we have to scoot off to but just to kind of piggyback to the roadmap conversation about maybe revisiting another topic in HRTD i am very curious not only about a just attrition in general but about and i don't know how we can we'd have to be delicate maybe about how we do it but i'm interested in seeing type like what schools people are leaving and if they're leaving the division or if they're leaving to go to a non-title one school or if they're leaving special ed to go to gen ed like i would like to dig into

[00:56:21] that a little bit deeper more on a granular level to see how we can provide support to those schools and those types of positions that are particularly taxing. We know some of these high-needs populations require a lot, and so we might see people leave three years from Title I, but maybe they go to a non-Title I school instead of just leaving the profession.

[00:56:43] So those are some things I'd like to kind of noodle on if we could in the future. Any more? Can I just add one point of clarification? So at the beginning, sorry, I don't mean to correct you, but I want to be clear, we have two – you just said the word hiring.

[00:57:02] The bonus for Title I is a retention bonus. So we have two different things that go on. So existing employees that continue to work in those roles get a retention bonus and new employees that go into those roles get a hiring bonus.

[00:57:18] I just want to make sure it was clear, especially with you as a new board member, we have two different things that go on in order to incentivize those, especially in our Title I schools. And can I further clarify? Absolutely. Because the retention bonus doesn't stack. So when I was speaking to the stacking, I was speaking to what we were doing to hire, and that is the new hire bonus that does stack.

[00:57:43] And just one other thing to add on, and I haven't had a chance to see Ms. Bolan today, is we have a lot of assistant principal postings that are coming out for many of them in Title I schools. So I met with the leadership of Dossal yesterday, and we are going to do that two-week head start for our Title I schools that are gaining an assistant principal.

[00:58:04] So when we post the positions, they're going to be posted a little bit differently as pool positions because we can't do 39 individual postings and 39 individual panels. That's just we will never get anyone hired. So when we do these pooled postings and we're going to list the Title I schools first for a couple weeks so that the leaderships in the Dossel can kind of start picking who could be good fits for these based upon their resumes and credentials.

[00:58:33] and then let them hire them first and then put the other AP positions that are new from the budget or from attrition into the postings two weeks later. So we're going to be mirroring that for our AP positions. That's great. Thank you all so much for this. I think we're done. I think we're ready to move on, right? You guys have to get going. So our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 18th from 4 to 5 p.m. In March, we'll resume our regular time slot, which is the first Tuesday of each month from 6 to 7. And if there's no further business, I entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.

[00:59:08] Oh, I just adjourned it. We are adjourned. There we go. We are adjourned. Thank you guys so much.

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