Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Retention: Implementation Plays
- We support school leaders to work additional days throughout the year. While they remain district employees, we pay school leaders to work additional days (equivalent to a year-round schedule) to support the rigorous work of school transformation. While many districts around the country have 10 or 11-month work calendars for principals, we believe that supporting school transformation requires more time to meet the intense challenges of the work, so we provide differentiated compensation based on a 12-month calendar.
- We highlight leadership development opportunities during recruitment efforts, including the cohort-based learning experience and embedded opportunities to collaborate and build relationships with other principals. In our network, every school leader is a part of their grade-level cohort and enjoys support in a ratio of 1 Partnership senior director for every 4-5 principals. The senior director acts as the principal’s advocate, coach, and supervisor.
- We provide individualized recruitment and selection support for schools. When school leader vacancies arise, we supplement the recruitment and selection process instead of relying solely on LA Unified to do so. We provide supports to launch a wide search and recruit high-quality candidates via network referrals, job postings, and phone campaigns.
- We retain broad control over the hiring process. As an in-district partner we seek to build buy-in and approval of strong candidates by LA Unified, but we retain control over the process and convene committees of school-level and home office stakeholders to interview and ultimately select the best fit for the school. We prioritize the voices of diverse stakeholders in the process in order to make more effective decisions and create buy-in around the hiring decision.
- We create individualized plans of support and identify threats to sustainability to support retention. Though there are some factors for principals that are universal (e.g., grueling work, long hours, and stress), for most people the best way to identify threats to retention is through proactive collaboration and conversation to learn about principals’ interests and ambitions and to develop a plan that can support their longevity in the role.
- We identify and support the small things that may make a principal’s job more sustainable in a high-need context. Some creative solutions we’ve implemented include supporting the principal in managing their schedule to ensure they have better work-life balance, for example, ensuring that they are able to attend a child’s basketball games regularly. We also look for leadership opportunities in line with the principal’s professional development goals, such as supporting them to take on strategic projects within the network that offer new learning and growth opportunities outside of their school.