In August we held out New Educator Training at the library in the High School. Many of our local businesses again were very generous in donating certificates and little welcome gifts to our new hires including Woodland True Value, Burgerville, Luckman Coffee,US Bank, Woodland Insurance Agency, Woodland Eye and Vision, Lewis River Dental, Safeway, Red Leaf Organic Coffee, Dairy Queen, Antony’s Pizzeria, Columbia Bank, and Fibre Federal Credit Union, . Each year we streamline and improve this important part of onboarding our new hires and this year felt seamless in a large part due to Nicole’s planning and preparation. A favorite part of the first day is a tour of Woodland where we all get on a school bus and Michael takes a tour of the schools and the town. This gives our new hires a great view of the social economic diversity in Woodland as well as a big-picture view of our wonderful community and businesses.
The end of summer and the beginning of the school year brings updating and reporting. In AESOP Nicole and I have worked to update the hours of employees since many have changed significantly with the reconfiguration. This is a moving target since changes in schedules continue for some time as schools figure out what works.
The hiring of classified staff continues to be on the front burner. With the change in state law that all new hires must meet the minimum hiring requirements of either having an AA (or equivalent credits) or have passed the ETS Parapro Assessment test, many of our applicants have been making appointments with ESD 112 or LCC to take the test. Since all Washington schools have to meet this requirement all of their applicants are also trying to meet this requirement. This has overwhelmed the testing systems so LCC is at this time no longer making appointments and ESD 112 is making appointments into the end of October. Principals with openings are trying to keep their staffing needs filled with substitutes but we have hired some of our substitutes so we are down in numbers as well. I am currently interviewing both classified and certificated substitutes to hopefully fill out our pool.
The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is also backlogged in certifications. Since a few of our teachers waited to renew their certificates until the end of June or later there was daily checking and on a few, I had to get a permit to bridge the deadline and to ensure they were okay to start school. Chelsea Jacobson at ESD 112 was wonderful at helping to get permits and communicating with staff who were renewing or new hires who were applying for the first time what they needed to turn in to make sure their applications were complete. We currently have two working on substitute certificates but I expect their regular certificate to be issued soon.
I am currently working on reporting our evaluations from the 2018-2019 school year to OSPI. This is an annual report. I am also working on finalizing our job descriptions for the year. We are working to make them more uniform and better reflect the evaluations for each of the positions. These are also used to post positions so I am also updating our templates in Recruit and Hire.