Over the past three months, the South Orangetown Central School District has hired more than 35 new teachers, administrators and instructional support staff. Joining the district in the midst of this massive effort gave Director of Staff Relations Joseph Lloyd insight into ways that hiring practices could be standardized to streamline the recruitment process districtwide. Lloyd presented the new process and supporting materials for review and feedback at the September 20 Admin Council meeting.
Beyond making the process more efficient, Lloyd also sought to enhance the district’s capacity to effectively and consistently evaluate certified candidates. “For teacher applicants, we will be integrating the Danielson Framework* in order to evaluate candidates as they move through our interview committees and demonstration lessons. For administrators, school psychologists and other certificated positions, we are going to utilize the tools that we regularly use for our observation processes. Through this approach, we have the opportunity to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of those candidates that we are onboarding here in SOCSD,” he noted. In their advisory role, interview committee members will rate, rather than rank, candidates while considering their knowledge and capacity to meet and exceed specific professional skills.
“Standardizing our recruitment process is an excellent step,” noted Superintendent of Schools Robert Pritchard. “Using these rubrics will make the applicant evaluation process more authentic and strengthen our capability to identify the most talented and qualified candidates.”
Aspects of SOCSD’s new recruitment process have already been put in place, with full implementation anticipated by mid-October.
*The Danielson Framework was designed by veteran educator, author and consultant Charlotte Danielson to capture “good teaching” by identifying research-based aspects of teachers’ professional practices which promote student learning and is widely used by school districts to measure teacher effectiveness.