Recognizing that pathways also contribute to 3.3, the following steps are moving with various degrees of implementation. MPS High School Students continue to be introduced to the teaching profession through South and Henry/Camden - funding continues through a grant from MDE. High School pathway through CTE is set to begin for fall 2024.

We are in the process of developing SpEd teacher apprenticeships with Owatonna and North Branch. Mankato will be at full implementation in the fall. Our partnership with Metro State University is being installed for an elementary program (with preK option) for a pre apprentice program with full implementation in 25-26

MPS academy -PELSB approved program (RIPA in October) recruited first cohort of candidates and first group of faculties. Courses start in June with candidates in the classroom this coming fall. Our established St. Thomas Residency begins its 8th cohort in the fall with 13 of the 20 candidates representing our BIPOC educators.

This strategy must be reassessed/replaced as a need.  The foundation for this work may have been in planning from the Comprehensive District Design, but a tool was not developed and schools were not named.

Substantial time was spent in supporting Anishinaabe, CityView, and Bethune through additional cadre support. Recruitment was targeted by working with the Indian Education department to tap into community partners to recruit at those sites and get temp supports. The Human Resources Recruitment team attends at several Indian Education sponsored events to help Anishinaabe to have staff reflective of the students they serve.

We actively participate in diverse recruiting events, both in person and online, to connect with our communities and attract high-quality candidates. Last year, we connected with approximately 1,000 candidates through recruiting events, both in person and online.

Some notable efforts included the People of Color Career Fair held at the Minneapolis Convention Center to recruit diverse licensed and non-licensed professionals where we connected with more than 180 candidates. This fair has been instrumental in hiring classroom support staff for schools like Las Estrellas, Green Central, Anderson, Emerson, and other departments and schools.

We partnered with external organizations including COPAL, Global Market, Metro State University, and Facebook group Madres Latinas for recruiting efforts for all staff positions and subsequent hirings including bi-lingual staff and next steps for hiring American Indian teachers and staff. A pool of candidates is established to continue this work as positions in our schools become available.
 

Through our negotiations efforts this year, we revised contract language to eliminate the pay plateau in our teacher contracts to retain mid to late career teachers, increased the starting salary for teachers to $52000+ (the highest in the metro) effectively focusing retention efforts on our most diverse group of early career teachers by eliminating Steps 1 and 2 on the schedule.  We negotiated a mutually beneficial agreement with MFT to reduce three days off the student year in response to family feedback that our school year goes too late into June. 

We continue work on a Memorandum of Understanding with Black Men Teach to assure all elementary students have a black male teacher as research shows the benefits to educational outcomes for our black students and all students.

After looking into it for five cycles of negotiations, we were able to grant automatic steps to ESPs and our food service workers to increase retention through competitive compensation. 
 

A short term need has been the focus on pursuing authentic engagement with hiring managers particularly principals and new hires to improve the new hire and onboarding experience and the hiring experience of our principals and managers. We engaged Hiring Managers in focus groups, one on one interviews with new hires, internal changes to the hiring process and a planned overhaul in 24-25 of our processes and procedures.

We continue to engage members of our community and parents through the implementation and monitoring of our Equity and Diversity Impact (EDIA) committee.