Staff Allocation Work Group Update

The Staff Allocation Work Group has met regularly over the past few months, and the group is very appreciative of the feedback it has received from staff and our districts. Based on that excellent input, recommendations were developed for 2009-10, which were shared with staff during the January 23 office meetings and with superintendents in the Superintendent Connection and at their January Heartland Administrators Meeting.

Things are moving forward, and we would like to give you the planned next steps for the process.
• Heartland Assessment Team members have started the process of calculating staff allocations for the 2009-10 school year, using the most recent available data. As you recall, for most disciplines, the primary variables in the formula are school enrollments, free and reduced lunch percentages, numbers of IEPs and travel for Heartland staff. This data will be plugged into the staff allocation formulas developed with stakeholder input in 2007-08.

• Staff assignment decisions will be driven by formula-based calculations and supplemented by input from school districts, Heartland staff and knowledge of local conditions and needs. The system will be data-driven and based on lessons learned over the past 12 months for making Heartland’s staff allocation process fair, equitable, efficient and transparent.

• As staff allocation calculations are completed over the next several weeks, leaders will begin reviewing staff assignments for each region. Partnership directors will be having conversations with Heartland practitioners and school districts to bring unique local needs into the decision-making process.

• Partnership directors, assistant directors, special education program assistants and discipline program assistants were updated on the staff allocation time line at their January 28 meeting.

• The goal is to have conversations completed and decisions made by the time schools begin their spring breaks. This time line may be impacted by when some of the data is available from the Department of Education.

If you have questions and/or ideas about staff allocation and assignments in your region, be sure to bring them to your partnership director.