Summary:

School districts face severe talent shortages, particularly among educators. Dr. Jim and Dr. Nick Polyak, Superintendent for Leyden Community School District 212 in Illinois, discuss innovative solutions, emphasizing the "grow your own" strategy. This episode digs into the creation of educational pathways that begin at the high school level, fostering future educators and addressing diversity in hiring. Hear insights on structuring a supportive and inclusive environment, pioneering vocational models, and deploying creative financial incentives like the unique "golden ticket" program. Discover how these initiatives build a resilient and representative educational workforce.

Key Takeaways:

• Teacher Shortages and Competition: School districts are facing dwindling pools of applicants and intense competition for existing educators, leading to the need for creative solutions.
• Vocational Training Approach: Implementing a vocational training approach to develop a pipeline of future educators from high school students can address educator shortages and promote community involvement.
• Golden Ticket Program: Leiden Community School District's innovative program guarantees high school students interested in education an interview and a $5,000 signing bonus upon college graduation and return to the district.
• Building Community and Belonging: Focusing on inclusive hiring practices, ongoing mentoring, and fostering a sense of belonging can help retain diverse talent in school districts.
• Economic and Cultural Impact: These initiatives not only enhance the educational workforce but also contribute positively to the local community by providing job-ready skills and creating opportunities for growth.

Chapters:

00:00

Addressing Teacher Shortages Through Vocational Training and Talent Pipelines

06:39

Creating a Sense of Belonging Through Mentoring and Social Events

08:51

Innovative Education Pathways for Career and College Readiness

13:17

Incentivizing Local Graduates to Diversify and Strengthen Teaching Staff

16:01

Innovative Teacher Pipeline Program Addresses Talent Gap and Community Needs

21:01

Innovative Anti-Bias Training for Diverse Talent Attraction

22:22

Building Symbiotic Grow Your Own Teacher Programs

23:58

Building Community Through Grow Your Own Educational Programs

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Dr. Nick Polyak: linkedin.com/in/nick-polyak-8266213

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



Join us at Engaging Leadership to learn and connect with a community of leaders in education just like you. This is the space where top people leaders share actionable insights and practical playbooks in fostering a high-performing workplace of the future.

Sign up as a member today for community updates on the latest leadership resources and exclusive event invites: k12.engagerocket.net

Those challenges are compounded by the mass exodus of educators from the profession, as well as an aging workforce. So what's the way forward to solving all of these problems? No single initiative will solve all of these issues, but one way to help attract more talent is to focus on growing your own pipeline of talent.

So who's going to guide us through this conversation? So we're joined by Dr. Nick Poliak, who serves as the superintendent for Leiden Community School District 212 in Illinois. The district contains two comprehensive high schools with 3, 500 students.

Nick strongly believes that all leaders should embrace the idea of being unfinished. There is no best version of ourselves, only the next version. As we constantly iterate to meet the challenging needs of our students, it becomes critical that leaders take the time and effort to continue working on their skills and capabilities.

He is not only a district leader and superintendent, he's married with four kids and they re reside in suburban Chicago. And also he never sleeps. So you have that Nick, welcome to the show.

[00:01:52] Dr. Jim: Looking forward to having this conversation with you because we haven't had a detailed discussion as of [00:02:00] yet on a formal grow your own Strategy and policy, but before we dive into that conversation, I think it's important for you to set the stage a little bit and give the listeners and viewers some insights into your background, your career, and also the district landscape.

And so it's a wonderfully diverse community. We serve personally. I was a high school math teacher in my first iteration, but I've been a building administrator, a district administrator. And I'm starting my 16th year as a school superintendent. And this topic is near and dear to my heart because doing this for 16 years, the job market has changed wildly.

[00:03:11] Dr. Jim: One of the things that caught my attention when you're describing a little bit of the district landscape and some of the challenges that you're having, and we'll get into the how we could potentially prescribe some solutions for those challenges is that you describe the district as extremely diverse, multicultural district in a suburban context.

So when you look at that sort of district in terms of student makeup. How did the student makeup and community makeup inform your broader hiring philosophy? Even before there were these talent shortages,

And so that's informed a lot of what we've been trying to do here as well.

What are some of the things that you've done from an organization perspective that gives you a better shot at retaining that talent all over the longterm?

I don't want anybody to ever leave here for financial reasons. That shouldn't be a reality. [00:05:00] But then how you set yourself apart is a unique challenge. So as a high school district, we did something that I think is very unique. When we were doing some construction projects, we actually added on a preschool and daycare.

To one of our high schools partnered with a third party to manage that. And we helped offset the cost by building the space and paying the utilities and the cleaning. And so our employees have access to very affordable. Childcare and preschool and daycare. This is a school district where you can make a good wage, but you can also bring your child here and get affordable daycare.

Which I think is a good set apart for us.

[00:06:13] Nick Polyak: The financial diversity is all over the board for what school districts can afford to do. And people want to belong. They want to feel like they're making a difference and they're contributing. And so having a a strong mentoring program. So they have immediate connections to somebody in their department who can help them as they transition and learn their craft.

We have a coaching model. We have instructional coaches that work with all of our new teachers for the first three years. Trying to do I think this is a low cost thing. We do a couple social events every year where the entire school district is invited. We rent out a whole bowling alley. And we go and bowl against each other and just have a night of fun and laughing.

[00:07:08] Dr. Jim: So I really like your emphasis on creating a sense of belonging within the faculty and staff I think that's a that's an underrated component of Building a retention culture But there's one other thing that you mentioned that I think it's worth exploring on. And that was the coaching model that you put in.

And you mentioned that you put that into play for the first three years of an educator that is in your district. Why did you emphasize the first three years as the timeline for the coaching mat model to be in effect?

So it's not [00:08:00] that it goes away. It just becomes more optional if you feel like it would benefit you. But to really hold that hand, cause I think once you've been here in Illinois, you acquire tenure after four years, it's moving to three years now. But I think once somebody has become part of that culture.

And they've shown, that coach has come alongside them, that mentors come alongside them. Usually people will want to stay where they are for the majority of their career.

[00:08:51] Nick Polyak: There's multiple layers to this. So if I start at the beginning our family consumer science department saw a need to create an education [00:09:00] pathway. If you look at our school district, I think inherent to our DNA is giving kids pathways to college and career. And for example, if a student is interested in automotive science, we have a full track and certifications embedded in if you want to work on cars.

We have similar things for working for doing metalworking and advanced manufacturing. But in this case, if you are interested in becoming a teacher, we have a pathway of courses that'll take you towards either early childhood care or elementary and secondary education, where our students not only get to learn from our teachers about that pathway, but they get to go out in the community and volunteer, maybe even in the schools that they went to when they were younger.

And so they get to work alongside a teacher and see and feel what that job looks like and say, yeah, this is something I want to pursue. Once I graduate from high school, we think that's one of the best things we can do is help a kid. Hone down what it is they want to do, so if they do choose to go to college, they've already know what it looks like and feels like.

This sounds like it pulls some notes from there. Am I gathering that correctly?

So if you graduate from high school, you want to take those credentials, you can go right into those jobs. Or you can take the skills and knowledge and go to the college and pursue a formal teaching degree. And so we like to have that duality available for kids, whichever direction you want to go, the pathway will prepare you either way.

[00:11:17] Nick Polyak: I would say five or 10 years ago, I would have said we're on the more innovative side. I'm seeing a resurgence in that area because the trades are drying up. We, a couple of years ago started a new relationship with the local plumbers union, where we're sending kids there after school and they're taking courses.

And if they complete that path of courses, they get to immediately graduate. Into the apprentice program with the plumbers union. And so there's a strong desire out there and a need And so I'd like to say it's not everywhere, but I'm seeing more places start to go this way

What happens after as they're going through the undergraduate program, how have you created a cycle where they're boomeranging back?

But if you come back home to Leiden, there's a 5, 000 signing bonus waiting for you. And I tell the kids, I want you to take this and put it on your fridge, put it on your cork board, whatever it is to remind you that your default is to come back [00:13:00] here. And this is important because this ties back to the earlier part of our conversation about representation.

When we were doing equity and justice work with our board of education we said the only surefire way to get our teachers to look more like our kids is to hire more of our kids back as our teachers. And so we're trying to incentivize our students to come back to us and become our future teachers.

It helps us with diversification. It also helps us with the teacher pipeline.

[00:13:56] Nick Polyak: That's a really good question. It actually presented two problems for us. [00:14:00] One was you're going to bring in one new teacher at one compensation and another one at a different compensation. And the way we solve that was by saying this is a one time stipend. This doesn't count as salary doesn't compound into year two.

So it's really just a one time recruitment stipend. But then the other thing is we have teachers that work here that have been here for years and years. who also went here. And so there was a question about, wait a minute, is this retroactive? Do those of us who came already, do we get this? And we had to just say, no, this is a new initiative moving forward.

And it took some conversations back and forth with our union, but I think ultimately they saw the common good of it's good for them too, to be able to bring our kids back and to recruit and bring in the best possible, colleagues.

You've got to have some level of representation at the leadership ranks too. So by solving for one challenge, you're also creating an opportunity for another challenge to show up. So how did you navigate that two tiered issue where you're creating representation at the Leadership tier as well.

And But I would love to think that we're a place that has opportunities for growth from within. And so for bringing back a more diverse teaching base, that will eventually lead to leadership opportunities for those same people. And so think of it as a grow your own administrator program. That's happening [00:16:00] simultaneous as a grow your own teacher.

So when you look at this program, as it's been deployed, what are some of the impacts and results that you've noticed so far?

And as soon as we started doing it, we immediately began to honor it. So the word got out, on their Facebook groups and their friend groups that if you're in school hey, wait a minute, if you go back to Leiden, they're going to give you 5, 000. And we encouraged kids to tell their older siblings and their friends in the community.[00:17:00]

And so we've already hired back almost a half dozen of golden ticket recipients who never were even told about it when they were in school.

What's been your line of sight into that sort of track? Materializing. Have you seen a lot of folks take advantage of that route as well?

And by and large, we follow NCAA [00:18:00] clearing house data. And if we look at our students, typically our kids follow a pretty close to 40, 40, 20 pattern. After four years of high school, 40 percent of them go to a four year university, 40 percent go to a two year community college, and 20 percent go straight to the military or workforce.

So we know there's always a market. For these students to go any one of those three directions.

For the community and resources and facilities that you've built to respond to the challenge of retaining the existing staff. So I like, this ecosystem that you're creating. One of the interesting things about what you're describing is that, it's a relatively innovative approach. And I haven't heard other districts [00:19:00] doing this. But whenever you have a new initiative that's thrown out there, you can encounter.

Resistance from your existing staff, from the community, from the board. What did you encounter and how did you overcome it?

So working with the school board to say, let's prioritize some of our funds from here or there to pay for these tests for kids. That's a new expenditure item for us, but we thought it was really important that we cover those if we want to make these opportunities truly available to every kid. So that was one having to build out unique spaces, you can't teach some of these skills in a standard classroom.

We're going to build a preschool for you to teach in. We're going to bus you in the middle of the day out to other elementary schools to get these opportunities. So there's a lot of costs that come in. That we, that the board of education is always wonderfully supported.

There, there might be a lack of talent or lack of jobs. It creates opportunities to [00:21:00] to be a little creative there. One of the things that i'm wondering about when you have a new initiative like this, especially when it's focused on bringing in more Diverse talent or more representative talent into your organization.

You have to make changes all across the employee life cycle but particularly on the talent attraction side You The selection side and the onboarding side. Tell us a little bit about some of the tweaks that you made in those areas.

What things they're bringing to the table, what things they're bringing to the interview room. And so in order to be part of our interview teams, you have to gone, you have to have gone through this training to be qualified to be interviewing candidates for us. And hard to say what difference it's made, but we've been very very determined.

And trying to do everything we can to make these processes be true to get the best possible teachers for our students.

[00:22:42] Nick Polyak: I think the one of the big takeaways, I think, is that this is bigger even than us. And so when we send our students out to go work in the elementary schools and train with those teachers and learn what it feels like, that's beneficial to those teachers as well. What elementary teacher wouldn't love to have a high school kid there [00:23:00] supporting and helping and learning from them?

But we also remember that those students are our future students and they're seeing mentorship. They're seeing role models in these kids coming over from the high school that are going to be future teachers. And so this whole process is symbiotic. It benefits so much more than our hiring practices or what's happening here.

It benefits, Our kids, our future kids, our teachers, elementary teachers, it really plays in every single direction. One great example of this is we have a student of ours that I'm thinking of. When she was here, she was actually one of our student school board members. Maybe a topic for a future conversation we can have. She went off to college and she came back and is now teaching at one of our elementary schools.

So she went through this process. She went off to college And she's back now supporting kids that are going to be our future Lydon Eagles. And it just warms my heart to see our kids, whether they come back to us because they want to teach high school or the elementary, it's just so beneficial to our entire community.

people with valuable skills and the reason why I think it's important is that if other leaders are trying to make this case to their school board in terms of why do we need to invest in this particular thing, as opposed to some of the other initiatives that we might have, this would be a good way to build a board.

Buy in and maybe even community buy in. If you have community partners that you engage with. So it creates this nice what's in it for me. It answers that question to both the board and community leaders so that you can justify the allocation of resources in that space. Great stuff, Nick, and I appreciate you hanging out with us.

If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

And I think that's how we all get better. It's how we all move forward is by sharing with one another.

And we talked a lot. In this conversation about creating a sense of belonging and creating a sense of community. And when, oftentimes when we hear things like that, we often discount it as this fluffy stuff that doesn't really go anywhere. And when you see it executed in a meaningful way within a school district by allocating, not only resources for building out things like daycare, but also building out mentorship programs and development [00:26:00] programs that help, Those representative communities of educators feel more at home within the school itself.

That creates an, that's an important lesson to take home. The other part of the belonging and community line of thought that we line of conversation that we had that I think is important is that it shows up in where you're investing your educational resources. So if you're having this grow your own program, You're building community and you're building belonging because it's rooted in the idea that these resources are being spent to develop skills that will immediately go back into the community and start impacting and strengthening the community itself.

So like Nick mentioned, if you want to reach out to him, I'm sure he's got a lot more details that he can give you. We appreciate you hanging out with us. For those of you who've been listening, hope you liked the conversation. Conversation if you enjoyed it, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

If you haven't already joined our community, make sure you do that and then tune in next time where we'll have another leader joining us and sharing with us the game-changing insights that help them build a high performing team