Board approves Leadership Lab program for New Haven School

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, 11 p.m. — The Nelson County board of education unanimously approved adopting Superintendent Anthony Orr’s proposed Leadership Lab that will target the New Haven School.

Superintendent Anthony Orr discusses the proposed Leadership Lab concept during Tuesday night’s school board meeting.

The Leadership Lab concept is an effort to improve staff retention and to develop teacher leadership in the district, while focusing on recruiting and retaining qualified, high-quality teachers.

The program will create an additional screening step in the selection process for teachers who wish to teach at the New Haven School.

Teaching positions at New Haven not presently filled by a teacher with tenure — more than a dozen some say — will be advertised as vacant. Teachers who do not have tenure the school are welcome to apply for the Leadership Lab.

Orr said he planned to post open job positions at New Haven School by Feb. 1, and then have participants selected for the program by early March.

“We can then open up the hiring process for the rest of our teaching positions in the rest of the district,” he said.

The Leadership Lab will involves screening applicants for teaching positions and encouraging leadership development.

Participants will be required to:

– be willing to pursue an advanced instructional leadership degree or certification (such as principal, instructional coach, special education, etc.). The school district would assist successful candidates by paying tuition for one graduate-level course per semester.

– complete a screening process at Central Office Orr called “dispositional screening,” a formal process to gauge an applicant’s disposition or mindset in becoming a quality teacher.

– agree to a three-year commitment at the school if selected.

The school’s site-based council will continue to hire teachers; the difference is that teachers who wish to teach at New Haven will be required to participate in the program, Orr said. After the screening process, the district will forward its recommendations on to the site-based council.

Teachers hired in this program would be assigned a teacher leadership role at the school, and would receive additional coaching and feedback.

Orr said developing leadership skills among teachers will encourage teachers to move into leadership positions in the district when they occur and make sure those who do are ready to lead. Teaching now is much more collaborative, and leadership skills are necessary for creating effective collaboration among teachers.

“What we don’t know is if we’ll have three people apply for this or 30 people apply for this,” Orr said at the board’s work session on Jan. 5.

Due to the district’s commitment to help fund graduate coursework, the number of people allowed in the program will be limited to about 10, depending on the district’s budget.

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