North Chicago D187

Overview

In three years, North Chicago transformed its recruitment, hiring, and retention practices via a conscious and sustained effort. When we started, North Chicago struggled to achieve their desired hiring results. However, over time, we were able to pinpoint areas of improvement for the district to achieve maintained success.

These results proved difficult for a number of factors. We found that a majority of the search effort took place over the summer, which crippled their recruitment efforts.

We also discovered that many schools were comfortable starting the school year with multiple open vacancies. This was a result of a lack of value for standards when it came to teacher quality. Finally, we found that there were far fewer teachers of color within the district. All of these factors were crucial pieces to the puzzle that we needed to help the district discover solutions to.

Project

Talent Management

Client

North Chicago D187

The Outcome

Through our cooperative efforts with North Chicago, we were able to implement a district-wide transformation.

  • Recruitment efforts shifted, ensuring that teachers are now hired earlier, emphasizing quality. As a result of this modification, the number of vacancies at the beginning of the school year and the number of costly, contracted teachers needed to fill gaps were slashed in half between 2019 and 2020.
  • The district made a concerted effort to extend its talent pool to become more diverse and thoughtful. Consequently, the number of educators of color climbed from 14% of new hires in 2018 to 36% the following year. 2020 saw more success, with around 50% of new hires being teachers of color. 
  • Turnover is down overall, dropping from 39% to 32% in just two years.  Moreover, turnover is being actively managed within the district. HR has a good idea in advance as to which teachers will likely leave and hires new staff based on anticipated vacancies.