By Desiree Williams
During its Jan. 13 meeting, the Zionsville Community Schools Board of Trustees approved two partnerships that will modernize and improve the district’s human resources processes.
Due to the increase of required annual compliance training for Indiana teachers and staff, the ZCS leadership team identified a company that can better address those requirements. PublicSchoolWORKS provides online compliance and safety training for K through 12 staff. Its digital library offers more than 600 training courses, many of which are state-specific modules. These modules can be assigned to individuals and can be completed alone or in a group setting.
“With these robust training programs, we feel that we will be able to provide more timely instruction, both as we onboard new hires and student teachers, as well as all of those annual reviews that we do typically at the start of the school year each August,” said Rebecca Coffman, chief operations officer.
Coffman said 70 percent of districts in Ohio already utilize the platform, as do hundreds in Illinois and a few others in Indiana.
The board approved a two-year contract, with the first year incurring a discounted rate of $14,000.
In addition, the board authorized ZCS to engage in the K-12 Partner Program by LinkedIn. The partnership allows the district to utilize LinkedIn to post job openings online as well as search for and target educators with certain talents and/or licenses from specified locations.
Coffman said in just the last three years, the amount of candidates applying for open positions has decreased dramatically, from four or five hundred to less than 70, many of whom were not fully licensed.
“We know that we need to do more than what our current practice has yielded,” Coffman said. “Wonderful new teachers (have been) brought to our district, but we want to be ahead of the curve as we get ready to engage in competition with our neighboring districts across the Metro area.”
The program’s annual cost is just more than $13,000. The agreement includes use of four components of the program: Recruiter corporate, career page, job slots and job wrapping.
Other highlights:
- The board conducted its annual reorganization. Joe Stein, Debbie Ungar and Jane Burgess were re-elected to their positions as president, vice president and secretary, respectively. All members will donate their annual stipend to the Zionsville Education Foundation.
- The board authorized the purchase of six type “D” buses and one wheelchair-accessible bus. These will be propane-fueled, which Chief Financial Officer Mike Shafer said is the first step toward converting most of the fleet. He said propane will lead to cost savings and cleaner burning.
