This equity story describes the ways that Phillip’s Academy Charter School has increased equity in diversifying the teacher workforce.

Stakeholder Voice for Equity

Upon our principal’s first year at our charter school, the school had just completed a needs assessment with corresponding report from a third party consultant who surveyed teachers, parents and leadership. The new principal received the results which indicated that the school's culture needed support (teacher relationships with families, behavioral responses with students, general family disconnect from the school). There was a large turnover preceding the change in leadership. We used this data to recruit teachers and staff members who were reflective of the student body and able to provide a culturally affirming atmosphere for families. Prior years indicated that the faculty was not reflective of our students' make up.

Distributed Teacher Leadership for Equity

Our charter school launched an internal committee, Recruit and Retain. We did this with the goal of having our teachers refer the best and the brightest talent for our families. We knew that we wanted to increase our diversity in culture and gender. The initial planning was done by school leadership and Human Resources. However, every other part of the process was developed in collaboration with teachers and teacher leaders. The commitment was voluntary, yet the school was able to secure 15 teachers who were enthusiastic to offer suggestions, insight and help to bring diverse candidates for review. Each year staff receives a small bonus if their referral is hired.

Professional Learning/Mentoring for Equity

In 2018, our charter school led summer professional learning focused on equity and with a partnership from a local university.

In 2019, our charter school began a partnership with a group whose approach is an evidence-based, comprehensive model that builds leadership and life skills in students as a Tier 1 approach to Social and Emotional Learning. The first year's professional learning was focused on all staff's internalization of highly effective habits. A key component in this year was around equity. Additionally, we layered this learning with a contract of a trainer who worked to support teachers in equitable practices throughout that school year and for years to come.

At this point, our school has equipped itself with a team of 6 diverse team members who each support our Director of Student Support. This team of teachers and staff supports/mentors students, other teachers and families in ways that complement our expectations for equitable practices.

Policy/Procedures for Equity

Our charter school launched an internal committee, Recruit and Retain. We did this with the goal of having our teachers refer the best and the brightest talent for our families. We knew that we wanted to increase our diversity in culture and gender. The initial planning was done by school leadership and Human Resources. However, every other part of the process was developed in collaboration with teachers and teacher leaders. The commitment was voluntary, yet the school was able to secure 15 teachers who were enthusiastic to offer suggestions, insight and help to bring diverse candidates for review.

This committee has become a key role in the procedures related to diversifying our teacher pool. Our interview policies and procedures assist the school in ensuring the school employs the right for our community. Much of our ability to diversify the school has been evolved organically based on the nature of the process. We have put a heavy emphasis on candidates being able to demonstrate relatability to our students and families.

Utilization of Quantitative Data

As diverse leaders we establish hiring goals for every school year. There are two sources we draw from prior to entering hiring season. The first is strictly quantitative, we leverage our human resources information system (HRIS) which takes the form of Paychex to run demographic data on our teaching community. We look at age range, gender, sex, years of experience, and city of residence (we feel it's important to have staff that live and/or are from the communities we serve). We also review the data from our employee engagement survey to ensure we incorporate staff input. Both sources demonstrated our organization would benefit from an increase in male staff with a specific focus on males of color. For the 2022-2023 school year we are proud to share that we hired 7 men of color in diverse areas ranging from School Deans to floating teachers to Teaching Assistants. Our HRIS data showed our number of male staff members was low and our employee engagement survey also indicated a desire to increase the number of male staff to support our male students. Finally, we noticed an increase in our Latino student population and we constantly strive to ensure our faculty reflects our community. Once again we leveraged PowerSchool to identify changes in student demographics and as a direct result we were intentional in focusing on hiring bilingual staff of Latino descent. We will measure our progress by assessing this year's employee engagement results, parent satisfaction surveys and employee retention. Our organization continues to focus on leading with data driven decisions and we are proud of the progress we have made in diversifying our workforce.