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Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Episode 112: From Data to Classrooms: How Canyons Matches Staffing to Student Needs
Each spring, while students count down the days to summer break, Canyons District’s Human Resources team kicks into high gear. That’s because it’s hiring season, and the task of recruiting the best and brightest teachers for a school district the size and caliber of Canyons is nothing short of Herculean.
In the latest episode of Connect Canyons, we explore how school systems like ours manage to hire hundreds of educators each year while balancing student needs, budget realities, and the ever-changing job market. You’ll hear from CSD’s two crack recruiters, Lori Reynolds and Kelly Tauteoli, both former school principals. And we’ll talk to Canyons Human Resources Director Steve Dimond about all the data-crunching and detail-sweating that goes into calculating how many teachers are needed to staff each one of our 47 schools and programs each year.
“Our goal is to always hire the very best candidates that we can, because that's truly where the rubber hits the road is. If our students are going to make growth and be proficient, it starts with the teacher in the classroom,” Dimond said. “All of us have a teacher who made a difference in their life, and we want make certain that we find those teachers for all of our students.”
1:54 — The Scale of Teacher Hiring
The hiring volume at CSD fluctuates significantly from year-to-year—from 300 teachers three years ago to about 100 projected for this year. The recruiting season begins in February with "crunch time" in March when schools receive their teacher allocations
5:35 — Hiring Challenges and Market Shifts
There are signs that the nationwide teacher shortage has abated. Special education, dual language immersion, math, science, and CTE positions remain the most challenging teaching jobs to fill. But local colleges and universities are starting to train more teacher candidates. CSD also has “grow your own” programs to prime the teacher pipeline.
9:25 — Why Teachers Choose Canyons
Canyons has a reputation for supporting teachers with training and adequate resources. The District’s access to the great outdoors and proximity to the urban perks of Salt Lake City are also big draws. In addition, Canyons has invested heavily in growing teacher salaries; the starting teacher salary is currently $61,610.
14:59 — Forecasting Staffing Needs
Forecasting hiring needs from year-to-year is no small feat. It starts with demographic data and enrollment projections, while taking into consideration the unique programmatic needs of each school. Class size targets vary by grade level: K (22.15), grades 1-3 (22.3), grades 4-8 (26.3), and grades 9-12 (27).
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyon School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, kirsten Stewart, and today we're resuming our short mini-series examining what it takes to operate a school system the size and caliber of Canyons School District. Now, every spring, while students count down the days to summer break, school district HR teams kick into high gear. That's because it's hiring season, and the task of recruiting the best and brightest teachers for CSD's classrooms is nothing short of Herculean. In this episode, we'll explore how school systems like ours manage to hire hundreds of educators each year while balancing student needs, budget realities and the ever-changing job market.
Speaker 2:You'll hear from CSD's two crack recruiters, lori Reynolds and Kelly Tautioli, both former school principals, and we'll talk to Canyon's Human Resources Director, steve Diamond, about all the data crunching and detail sweating that goes into calculating how many teachers are needed to staff each one of our 47 schools and programs each year. Now, whether you're an aspiring educator, a policy wonk or just curious about how your local schools work, you'll gain an appreciation for the careful planning and people power that keeps our classrooms humming. Thanks for being here today, kelly, lori and Steve, thanks for having us. Yes, well, okay, let's start by getting kind of a sense of the scale and the scope of, you know our annual hiring push. So we're a school system. We have 32,000 students, 6,000 employees and, like any employer, we have turnover as employees retire, relocate. So how many teachers do we hire in a typical year?
Speaker 3:So I was going to try to think about an average for kind of over the years. But I looked and really it kind of varies from year to year. So I've been in this job three years. The first year we hired 300, last year 200, and this year we're on track to hire about 100. And so there are a lot of factors that go into that and I think we're going to get into more of that as we go through the questions.
Speaker 2:And Kelly, I know you're specifically over secondary school, so you're talking about 100 teachers just district-wide elementary and secondary.
Speaker 4:Yes, and I'll jump in here. Kelly, this year right now in secondary, new hires, just new teachers. To our district is secondary 45. Okay and elementary right now is 44. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you, Lori, and being a former school principal, you're sort of well-versed in kind of what schools need, what they're looking for right, Like it's valuable experience to have right in the hiring and recruiting role. Yeah, it is Definitely. When does a typical hiring season begin and how long does it take to fill most positions?
Speaker 4:We hold our annual training for our principals, our hiring training, in February to prepare them for the first weeks in March, which we affectionately call crunch time. You could ask any of our principals about the crunch bar.
Speaker 3:They actually got a crunch bar.
Speaker 4:They did to remind them of crunch week, and that's the week where principals get their FTE, which Steve will be talking about later, which is their teacher allocation for the fall. Then we post some early jobs and those are our title schools, special education positions, secondary math and our CTE positions. During that time, that crunch week, we place our obligatory transfers from schools who may have lost a teacher due to that FTE process when they get their student enrollment. Once that's complete, all jobs district-wide are posted and principals are really on top of it and want to find the best teacher candidates for their schools to bring out the best in our students, of course. So our principals are really motivated to fill those vacancies quickly. So right now we are a little over a month into our hiring when our hiring season started and there are 23 positions only left in both elementary and secondary left to fill. Wow. So the principals have been on it and hired quickly. They jump on those candidates when they see them.
Speaker 2:For the most part we are filled, yeah and I know that really like, of all the things that make the most difference for student achievement, having the right teacher in the classroom is number one, right? That's why it's so important. So what are, just kind of to touch on what you mentioned then, what are some of the significant hiring challenges we face, like? Are there specific subject areas or grades that are harder to recruit than others?
Speaker 4:That's a great follow-up question Of those 23 jobs that I mentioned that are still open. Those are our harder-to-fill positions. We do have around 10 dual-, dual language, immersion language teachers that you know Ophelia Wade goes out to recruit to Spain and Mexico to get those immersion teachers into our schools, into our classrooms.
Speaker 2:She's the person for us to oversee some of those programs, right yeah?
Speaker 4:yeah, and so we have a high number of those in elementary. Most of those jobs, too, are special education positions, especially our special programs and our CTE and secondary that are still left to fill, and these are also the positions that I spoke about that are posted early, ok.
Speaker 2:And I know that traditionally, like we've had shortages for special education, we've had shortages for science, math, and I know that leading up to the pandemic and afterward, we were in the throes of a pretty significant national teacher shortage. How are things looking now?
Speaker 3:Are we seeing a shift in the job market? It's very interesting. There are a lot of things outside of our school system that are affecting, I think, our teacher pipeline, are affecting a lot of things. We know that after the pandemic, the number of students enrolling in our state colleges and universities has declined. It's been down.
Speaker 2:Just overall, not even just those that are interested in education.
Speaker 3:Yes, overall and they still have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and that affected teacher preparation programs probably like every other college in a university. So teacher preparation numbers of students have been down. Those have been coming back up, but we're not to pre-pandemic levels yet. So that's a factor. However, I think right now in our economy, our economy is very unsure. Right now there's a lot of things going on and people are holding on to their jobs. It looks like Remember I said we hired 300, then 200, then 100, maybe this year and I think people are not leaving their jobs at the same rate that they have in the past. They're going to just hang on to a sure thing right now and maybe not make that move to Delaware or whatever. The number of our students preparing to be teachers is increasing again, but there aren't as many jobs at the moment and so we're not feeling a big teacher shortage right now. But that could happen. Things could flip and that could change even next year.
Speaker 2:Sure, right and I know that I mean there's a lot that goes into that too right, just even in like K-12 enrollment overall right, the state right has also had a decline in enrollment which are largely driven by the decline in the birth rate right. And high housing prices, really high housing prices right, yeah, education is kind of the center of a community.
Speaker 3:I mean we're affected by all the surrounding factors for sure, Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know too that you had mentioned too. Colleges and universities have struggled to train enough teachers to meet the demand here in Utah and at one point we were recruiting up to like 30%, I think, of our new teachers from outside the state. I know you two, lori and Kelly, are still out there crisscrossing the country to find the best talent, and I know we've been really successful at finding talent, especially people who are willing to move here to Utah. Right, I mean, where else can you find, like the great access to outdoors, excellent standard of living, footsteps from the greatest snow on earth? But are we still recruiting a lot from outside Utah?
Speaker 3:We're not doing as much this year as we have in the past and again, I think that's a unique situation with this year because and just to your point of declining enrollment in kind of the greater Salt Lake area a number of districts around us have closed schools and so those teachers are trying to find places to teach. That has increased the number of candidates, that we have great candidates for jobs and we have kind of strong teacher preparation programs coming in to us. And so we made a strategic decision this year not to go out and do as much travel Be cost effective.
Speaker 3:Yes, save some money because it doesn't look like we're going to need it as much this year. We have a lot of candidates for our positions, so this year we haven't done as much, but we know that again that could just flip next year and we're back out beating the bushes again. Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, another thing that just struck my mind that I didn't consider before is, like retirements also play a role, and I think nationally I don't know if this tracks for Utah, but recently I think we reached peak baby boomer retirement. So, like right, we reached the peak of the most baby boomers who would be retiring, and that's a big population boom right, that group and so I would imagine like fewer people are also retiring, mm-hmm, I don't know. Fascinating stuff. So what are some of the strategies that we've used to attract high-quality teachers and why do teachers choose Utah? Why do they choose Canyon?
Speaker 4:School District. Well, I think one of the great things that we've done and that you've been a part of too, kirsten is last year we started the ACE Scholarship Program in our own district, where our employees can contribute to get these scholarships for our seniors in high school who want to pursue an avenue in education and then also our current employees who work in the district to pursue an initial education degree. And what is really important about that and the high-quality teaching aspect of it is that we have so many paras that work in our special education classrooms that are so passionate about the students and the work that they do, so becoming a teacher is the next, that's the natural step for them is what they want to pursue, and I think it speaks volumes to that positive climate in our district that so many people want to continue and search for that education avenue because they can see the impact it has on our students and that leads to that high quality teacher aspect. I also know that when Kelly and I are on the road, especially at our universities here in Utah, we hear from the students all the time when they approach our booth that how they have heard that Canyon supports their new teachers and we really have a stellar reputation for that.
Speaker 4:Many times when they come up to our booth at a fair, we explicitly ask them what do you know about Canyons? Already they're like we want to know what they know first. And if they're familiar, it is definitely the support that we give our teachers that they tell us. And if they don't know anything about us, we ask well, what's most important to you as you are starting your teaching career? And almost inevitably they say it's support. Like I'm scared to death, I'm starting this whole new thing and we need support. And so that's when Kelly and I were like all right, that's our first talking point, because in Canyons you will find yourself supported, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We have instructional coaches at all of our schools, right and free training, professional development opportunities throughout the year.
Speaker 4:Yes, just continuous, like ongoing professional development, and that's what makes a great teacher right. Is that desire to keep learning, to be innovative, to keep doing the next like the next best thing that we find is evidence-based for our students? I know hiring is just part of the equation.
Speaker 2:To your point, like with the ACE, scholarship and other things and instructional coaches, we're making sort of these longer term investments right, so that we're not just able to recruit but we're retaining the employees that we have. So what are some of the investments we've made on that front?
Speaker 4:First and foremost. I mean everybody looks at numbers first when they walk up to our booth or they call and inquire at our human resources desk like what's your starting salary? And our starting salary in comparison to our surrounding districts is very competitive. And again back to that support onboarding our new teachers at the start of every school year with an entire week dedicated just to them that peaks week that we are all so, so involved in and we just love.
Speaker 4:We want to make our investment is in people.
Speaker 4:We want to make our new people feel welcome in our CSD family. We want to connect them with their colleagues and provide excellent ongoing professional learning so they can be successful in their grade level or their content area. And the other thing, an investment is retaining our student teachers has proven to be very successful for us, oh great. So Kelly and I place those student teachers and we are very intentional about who we place them with we want those strong, experienced mentor teachers so that they have that experience that's positive and just great in every way which reaps rewards for us at the end of their time with us, because now they know the Canyons way and then we've just set them up for success in our district and we also have strong partnerships with those universities. Especially well, in-state, and then notably out-of-state, is Iowa State University and we have a lot of kids from Iowa State because of all the wonderful things that Utah offers and the beauty like they just want to stay here. They come student teach, they do their practicums with us and they want to be in Canyons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've heard actually great things about that program. I mean that is really priming the pipeline for us.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, and they've been such a great addition to our team. They have. And actually, steve, maybe you can recall too I mean I think I don't remember what year it was but we, the Canyons Board of Education, really did go out on a limb to try to raise teacher salaries quite a bit Right, and that actually started sort of a salary war across the state where other districts had to bump their salary. And over the years we've increased teacher starting teacher salary quite a bit Right. I mean all teacher salaries.
Speaker 5:But oh very much so. Of it right, I mean all teacher salaries, but oh very much so. It's been about six years ago where we increased by almost $6,000 in one year, bringing the beginning teaching salary to $50,000.
Speaker 5:And it did cause a little bit of a war but, what it did is it caused all other districts to raise the bar to make teaching a livable wage, and until then, you know we were looking at maybe $30,000, $40,000, and so it's come a long ways to get to that $61,000, $61,000 that we currently are, and so yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:$61,000 is what we are for starting teacher ranks in Cair. So yeah, so six, so yeah, Sixty one thousand is what we are for a starting teacher right now in Canyons. Yeah, that's remarkable. I think at one point we had calculated it was something like a was a 20 percent increase in six years or something. I mean it was it's it's pretty substantial and like consecutive year after year after year.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about forecasting staffing needs. This is a little bit in the weeds, but it's like so vital right, like it's one of those things that no one really knows, that happens behind the scenes. But how do we determine how many teachers will need each year to fill our schools, right? What factors kind of go into those projections?
Speaker 5:It really starts with the number of students enrolled in our schools and the projections, as well as identified students and school needs. Fte allocations are determined by our directors of school performance. They're the ones who determine exactly what goes to each school, but some of the considerations used in factors are the number of students in a building, the number of multilingual students attending and their language proficiency. We know that there are struggles and that we need to provide additional supports. The number of students performing well below basic in reading and math, and possible impacts of special programs such as DLI, salta and special classrooms. We also look at student mobility rates is also a consideration, because if you have a large number of students moving in and out, you've got to be able to provide more intensive services for those students.
Speaker 2:It sounds like the way you describe it a little simpler than it really is.
Speaker 2:Right, because here's the reality. Right, we do a really big push in January to get many students enrolled as possible early, as early as possible, right, so that you have those projections and those kind of a rough idea of who to expect. But then inevitably, someone moves into the community later in the year, or someone didn't hear about it, and they don't register until August. You know, prior to the year, that they're going to start. And then, I know, even further compounding things or making things more complicated is the fact that we do have some, you know, an enrollment decline and even though as a district, we're capturing a larger share of the school age population than we were, even like two to three years ago, which is to say we are still a destination district, right, I think the headwinds are such, with the declining birth rate, that it's still in those elementary schools, some of those elementary schools, declining, and sometimes it's just fluctuating even from grade to grade. Right, you have a really big third grade but maybe a smaller kindergarten, and so, yeah, how do you account for all that?
Speaker 4:He's a master. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 5:So our IT department uses a program that's called Davis Demographics to try to help identify those things and it's you looking at community data to be able to help try and project. And also trends. What are the trends over the last five years? Of the comings and the goings, but it really is, especially for kindergarten. I hate to say it, but kindergarten is like a roulette wheel. You can do the very best that you can on guessing based upon birth rates for a zip code, but you don't know if those children are going to show up and our elementary numbers are significantly down. Our birth rates are down in our area and that makes it more difficult, especially because it will progress through If you have a smaller kindergarten class. It'll take 12 years to get to the senior year, but they will be smaller classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so really, I mean it comes down to I mean, where do you start with staffing ratios? I mean, do you have a target that you're trying to reach?
Speaker 5:So the board has allocated or has determined a staffing and a budgeting ratio. So, and we've done that since the inception of the district back in 2009. So for kindergarten, we staff at 22.15 students per class. That's the goal, but it's never perfect. There's always going to be a class that's a little larger and a class that's a little smaller. First through third grade are 22.3. Grades four through eight are staffed at 26.3. And grades nine through 12 are staffed at 27. And class sizes they truly rarely align perfectly with the staffing ratios.
Speaker 5:So when this doesn't occur. Principals make difficult choices about how the allocation is distributed within the school, as well as using alternative funds available to them, such as land trust or advanced placement or concurrent enrollment funds as well play a part in trying to backfill those areas. And for secondary schools, preparation periods also impact class sizes. So approximately 30 years ago, high school teachers were given the opportunity to provide input regarding having extended preparation period each day or every other day when high schools move to the AB block schedule, and so teachers voted for a preparation period each day, with the understanding that their class sizes would be larger. So for high schools on the AB block schedule, we anticipate classes to have approximately 36 students per class. Okay, if high schools were to move to a seven-period day schedule, we'd anticipate class sizes dropping to approximately 32 students per class, and for middle schools, because of the preparation period, it's about 31 students per class on a seven-period day, and we anticipate about 32 students on the six-period day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Interesting, Well and it's yeah. Students on the sixth period day yeah, Interesting, Well and it's yeah. So much goes into that. Like we once upon a time did an episode on how to build a board, I do not envy that work at the elementary. I mean the middle of the secondary school level right, yes, how many kids can go in each class and how many teachers do I need for each class and where are they going to be?
Speaker 4:And coming from the elementary world and hearing you know when Kelly and I worked together, and Steve, who has been a principal in a secondary school too, like I can't even imagine building a board. So they are just true. Wow, I don't get it Right High school's even harder.
Speaker 5:It's when you surround yourself with an incredible team because two heads are much better than one.
Speaker 2:The board and the administration have really tried to preserve funding to where it matters most right, which is in our schools and for staffing in our schools and in our classrooms. Are there any other innovations or new tools that we're sort of exploring to streamline the hiring process or kind of improve forecasting?
Speaker 5:So for hiring process we use an application called VidCruiter which allows potential candidates to interview 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere in the world. They just have to have an internet connection that allows Lori and Kelly to be able to review those on a regular basis and be able to push out those candidates to our principals who have a particular need. The other awesome thing is it allows our principals to go in and review those and identify four or five candidates that they feel would be a great fit for their school to bring in and do one-on-one interviews with themselves as well as their team to try to evaluate Onboarding. We're always looking at a better way. The district is going to be moving to a program called Q and we're hoping that that will help us improve our ability to onboard more electronically. Oh, interesting, just to simplify the process, but it's still out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And we just work on it every single time we get a chance.
Speaker 2:And for the uninitiated Q, is the new version of Skyward, which is our student information system, correct? Also our employee financial information system, right, so it's where all the data information on payroll and employees and yeah is kept.
Speaker 5:And students as well. So we'll be moving the financial side here in October and I think it's a year later where we're moving to the student system.
Speaker 2:So you talked about the initial part of the FTE process. What happens come fall, when we've done like we don't really know who's going to be in school until what's our official October 1 count right, that's the count that we send to the state to draw down the appropriate number of per student dollars and state funding. So what happens come October 1st and you're like 11 kids down in one particular class for your projections, how many?
Speaker 3:butts are actually in the seats. That's what we say. Okay, yeah, butts in seats.
Speaker 5:So we actually start working way before October 1st. Our goal is is, as principals are identifying before school starts what their numbers are going to be If they see that there's a significant reduction in their students. There's oftentimes well, not often, but occasionally where we'll take a teacher and then move them to a school where we know that we see more students who are enrolling. We do what's called a sixth and eleventh day count. Okay, and so trying to find out on that sixth day, how many students do we have actually shown up?
Speaker 5:Sixth day of the school, yeah, yeah, sixth day of school and also the eleventh, so that we can try and make adjustments for that, either through our FTE cushion, which is created between the staffing and the budgeting ratio, to give us an amount that we can hire other teachers and at the same time trying to look at do we need to move a teacher from a school where their numbers are significantly down to another school? That would help balance out the numbers. So we're trying to avoid large class sizes and then very small class sizes. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:It's a balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not an easy job Outlook for the next few years. Do we expect staffing challenges to ease, or are there sort of some headwinds stiff headwinds on the horizon for a while?
Speaker 5:We are starting to see a little bit more of an increase of students going into education.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 5:But it takes four years because of them starting there. Just like through the ACE program, when we increased salaries, we started to see a small uptick in the number of students wanting to go into education.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating.
Speaker 5:I had a young man in my neighborhood who always wanted to be a teacher, but he said I can't do this because it's not financially viable for myself and my family. So by doing that, it's giving individuals an opportunity to go into education that they would like to, and we have our Apple program which is for the alternative preparation.
Speaker 5:And so we're getting individuals who have this is really their second career, who always wanted to be a teacher but didn't see a possibility for that. So we're seeing those folks come back and I can't remember I think it was like six of our Apple teachers were part of our Teachers of the Year this year which is an incredible thing for our Apple preparation program, as well as these incredible individuals who love teaching, love kids and want to make a difference.
Speaker 5:So will there be headwinds? Yes, our goal is to always hire the very best candidates that we can, nationwide, from Utah, anywhere we can find them, because that's truly where the rubber hits the road is. If our students are going to make growth and be proficient, it starts with the teacher in the classroom. And you know, I remember, all of us have a teacher who made a difference in their life. I don't care who you are, there's at least one teacher who did, and we want to make certain that we find those teachers for all of our students.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, amen. Well said, Steve. I love that. I can't think of a better note to end on. You've been listening to Connect Canyons. This is Kirsten Stewart. If you've liked what you've heard, give us a shout out, and if you'd like to hear us cover anything else in particular of interest, just email us at communications at canyonsdistrictorg. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, facebook or Instagram at Canyons District or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
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