The Clark County School District is starting off the new school year by taking a look at how it can increase retention and improve diversity among its teachers and support staff.
With COVID-19 policy settled and students returning to something resembling the status quo, the district is looking toward the future, and considering some of the challenges that have been plaguing Clark County schools since before the pandemic.
For new CCSD recruitment director Brian Redmond, retention and diversity are among those problems that the district still has yet to solve.
Still, he said, this could be the year that CCSD makes new progress in that area, particularly in finding teachers from more diverse backgrounds.
"I know one of the things our team in doing in recruitment is we’re making sure that we’re traveling all over the U.S. this coming year for different recruitment fairs," he said, noting HBCU fairs. "We're trying to really hit those as hard as we can."
He said they look at demographics of other universities or education programs to bring more diversity to CCSD.
If they could get similar numbers, "that would be ideal. So that’s our goal: to promote diversity and find diversity wherever we can, and I know there’s a lot of other departments that work on that, as well. I know employee onboarding, they’re working a lot on retention this year and leaving most of the recruiting to us."
Research shows that having teachers of various backgrounds and identities is important for student achievement. A 2017 study from the Urban Institute showed that students from minority backgrounds saw an increase in academic performance in classroom ran by teachers from minority backgrounds. Redmond said he and his team are taking findings like these into consideration.
“In my mind, if I can kind of match the student population to the teacher population, I think that’s initially a good goal. Like you said, research bears it out: we have to find minority teachers to come in and some students connect better with minority teachers, and [we] want to make it as positive as possible for these kids,” he said.
Another concern on the horizon for the district is keeping teachers in the district once they’ve been hired. There have been struggles in the past with retention for Clark County schools, an issue Redmond said the district is looking to address in the coming years.
“They’ve increased the beginning teachers’ salary, now they’re starting at $50,000 instead of the low 40s, makes us more competitive with other districts in the Southwest and in the Mountain regions, and so I think that’s a start," he said. "But I know their departments are working really hard on some different plans on how to make sure that teachers are supported, because I think when teachers feel supported, they’re going to stay.”
Still, the district has some way to go before implementing actual measures to combat these issues. Redmond said he and his team are still figuring out their first move as students roll into the new school year.
“They haven’t gone on recruitment trips in years, they’ve been doing everything virtual, so our hope is that by getting out and getting to these different universities or different job fairs and speaking face to face with these people that can bring more in we can close the gap," he said.
While their goal is always to have no vacancies, there's a national teacher shortage.
"We hope to get to the point where we don’t need to be constantly out recruiting. Our hope is that we can be staffed, teachers stay, ... that would be the best situation for the students," he said.
Redmond added that the recruitment team will be attending recruiting events aimed at hiring on more Spanish-speaking and bilingual staff to bring into the district, as well.
