The Atlanta Public Schools has been recognized by the Georgia Association of School Personnel Administrators (GASPA) for outstanding achievement in various areas of human resources.

GASPA honored the District with four awards last week at its spring conference:

Platinum Award in Recruitment Process/Materials

- In fall 2017, Atlanta Public Schools launched a pilot program for a teacher recruitment initiative entitled “Teacher Recruitment Ambassadors” - TRA for short. The concept was based on national education research on the power of teacher leadership and the ability of master teachers to identify talent and fit in teacher candidates. The program includes a competitive, performance based application and interview process to identify 24 of the most talented teachers to serve as recruitment ambassadors, who play a key role in attracting and hiring excellent top-tier teacher candidates.

Gold Award in Strategic Partnerships

- Atlanta Public Schools’ teacher pipelines previously included traditional university-based student teaching and Teach for America. In 2014, the district began exploring partnerships in order to establish teacher residency programs. In 2015, a partnership with Georgia State University, Atlanta Public Schools, and several of its charter schools was formed, with Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School as the primary partner and host school.  From that partnership, CREATE (Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness) emerged as an innovative 3-year, teacher residency model with extensive opportunities for teacher and school leader collaboration, reflection, and professional learning within individual schools and between neighboring schools. This merger of programming (supporting both new and experienced educators) makes CREATE an effective partner in the effort to train teachers for work in several Atlanta Public Schools, both traditional and charter schools, in historically-underserved communities.

Gold Award in Retention Practices/Recognition

- APS has made retaining high performing employees a priority this year by implementing several strategies in the areas of:

New Teacher Onboarding – To ensure all teachers are poised for success, all APS teachers in the induction phase – years one through three and/or new to the school district – are prepared through the summer new teacher orientation and ongoing mentoring and coaching support throughout the first 90 days of instruction.

Teacher Leadership -- In order to better identify high-performing teachers, principals were provided tools to learn how to collaborate with their school leadership teams to more realistically review teacher performance. During these talent review conversations, the leadership team has meaningful conversations about teacher performance using both qualitative observations and quantitative data. Teachers with high-potential and high-performance are then identified for leadership opportunities within the building or district.

Retention Toolkits – To ensure APS is proactively addressing teacher retention, the District provided leaders with a bank of resources that center around identifying and retaining top talent during an annual Hiring for Teacher Quality (H4TQ) Training.

Best in Class Award in Employee Handbook

- Intended for both new and existing employees at APS, the employee handbook was created to give clear advice to employees and create a culture where issues are handled fairly and consistently.  The employee handbook is reviewed and revised every school year based on new policies and procedures within the district, and trends identified by employee misconduct investigations. It is stored on an internal SharePoint site, but it is also accessible on the Human Resources page from the main website for anyone, including the public. The employee handbook was also transformed into an interactive online ethics course that all employees take annually. The theme and activities change each year and have ranged from outer space to museum theme.

“We are thrilled to receive these accolades from GASPA,” said APS Chief Human Resources Officer Skye Duckett. “It is a reflection of the hard-working, innovative and dedicated professionals we have in our department and throughout the District. We are all focused on providing Atlanta with a high-performing school district where our students thrive, our educators and employees inspire, and we are trusted by our families and the community.”

For more than 50 years, GASPA has led the way in providing best practice human capital management services for Georgia’s K-12 public schools.