K-12 Faculty Recruiting, Selection, and Retention Planning

Introduction

The first step in developing a recruiting plan is creating a definition of what constitutes a "good faculty." What kind of people do you want in the classrooms of your district? The answer will not be the same for everyone, so the approach taken here is to establish a working definition and examine how it shapes the overall plan.

Recruiting Strategies for Rural and Urban Districts

This plan is based on the premise that a good faculty is a group of people who work together for the benefit of children and the quality of those children's education. That definition shapes the kind of person being sought: a team player. That term is a common buzzword today, so what does it mean concretely? A team player is not simply someone who does what they are told without question — someone who avoids rocking the boat so that everything runs "smoothly." A person who merely goes along with the crowd is not truly an active contributor. Being a team player means being less interested in who receives the credit than in getting the job done. It means people who are not afraid to invest extra time when needed. This can be a delicate issue: while you do not want employees who expect payment for every additional minute, genuinely strong professionals will not allow themselves to be taken advantage of either. A team player willingly applies creativity to solving problems, and trusts that if they pick up the slack today, others will do the same for them when the situation is reversed.

Once the type of faculty you want to build is firmly in mind, recruiting can begin. Identifying the right schools of education to recruit from is one important consideration. Different schools of education hold different philosophies, and those philosophies shape their curricula. The schools a district targets may also be influenced by geography. A rural school district in Wyoming, for example, might focus on institutions such as Chadron State, Black Hills State, Montana State, and the University of Montana, as well as the two universities in northern Colorado and the University of Wyoming, because their graduates will already be familiar with issues of distance, weather, and ranching and farming culture. An urban school district, by contrast, would more naturally focus on institutions in its own metropolitan surroundings. Cross-over is always possible, but it makes practical sense to recruit people who are already comfortable with where they will be working.

Recruiting literature for a rural district would likely emphasize quality-of-life advantages specific to smaller communities: easy access to the outdoors, a safer environment for raising a family, a strong sense of community, and the idea that in a smaller setting an individual teacher can make a greater impact. An urban school district might instead highlight the cultural amenities of city life — professional sports teams, arts venues, and other metropolitan attractions.

Other key recruiting considerations revolve around the school district itself. Prospective teachers will want to know about class sizes, ancillary duties such as lunchroom and playground supervision, and the level of support available for special education students in the classroom. They will also want to know what resources exist for troubled students and how robust the support systems are for students who are not native English speakers. Today, there are almost no districts in the country without some population from other countries, and teachers need to know how much assistance they can expect with these students.

Diversity and Candidate Outreach

Candidates will also want to understand how the district compares with others on pay scale. Schools in Texas, for example, start new graduates at higher initial salaries, but the overall pay scale does not rise as high as in many districts that begin at lower starting rates. Over the course of a teaching career, this difference can significantly affect total earnings. Prospective teachers will likewise want to know about continuing education opportunities so they can remain current with both general education trends and their specific discipline.

Finding the right ethnic and racial balance in a faculty will likely require attending recruiting fairs across a variety of settings — a deliberate mix of urban and more rural venues. Reaching a genuinely diverse candidate pool requires intentional outreach rather than reliance on a single channel or geographic region.

These days, colleges of education are actively addressing diversity issues, and many school districts are establishing entities such as diversity task forces. If a district cannot secure the diverse candidates it is actively seeking, it must still address the needs of minority students already enrolled. As one public school teacher put it: "If there are only two Black or Hispanic kids in the whole school, and people are not thoughtful and nurturing, it spoils education for those two." Thoughtful outreach and inclusive culture-building are not optional supplements — they are central to educational quality.