Reinventing Human Resources at the School District of Philadelphia

This is a case study analysis of The New Principal: Managing Human Resources by Jane A. MacDonald (2006). This case study focuses on issues a first year principal may face when entering her school for the first time. Ms. Vera Zola was not only a first year principal; she was also new to the school district. In her previous role as assistant principal, she was in a neighboring school district. In her new district, the Suburban Public School District (SPS), there were approximately 11,000 students enrolled (MacDonald, 2006). Ms. Zola was assigned to Roma Elementary, one of six elementary schools in the district. There were two middle schools and two high schools. Approximately 80% of high school graduates continued on to higher education or a trade school. Community members had diverse cultural backgrounds and lifestyles, and the community was growing.

When analyzing and evaluating case study 18: A Disillusioned Assistant Principal it is clear that when an employee’s values and belief systems are not aligned to the organizational structure of a school or district it makes it difficult to retain them and to bring about change.

Gomez-Mejia, L., Balkin, D., & Cardy, R. (2012). Managing Human Resources (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

The role of a Human Resource department is ever changing in today’s volatile business environment. Over the years HR have become strong strategic partners within an organization by providing functions such as recruitment,

Dion Killingsworth has been a Human Resources director for the past four years. After eleven years in education at both public and college levels he decided to move into human resources. He has been in human resources nine years and enjoys the challenges of employment law and helping staff members as well as administrators become successful in their careers. He currently oversees employee relations for 31 elementary schools, recruitment for these 31 schools, transportation, and food service employees in Colorado Springs School District 11 (District 11). Prior to becoming a human resources officer for District 11, Mr. Killingsworth was employed by the Antlers Hilton Hotel as part of their human resources team.

The Objective of this document is to outline a hiring procedures manual that a Human Resource Department for a school district might use to hiring an employee. Hiring is arguably the most important function of the HR Department and a set of procedures should be in place to make the steps move in an efficient manner.

I am very interested in a career field in Human Resources. For this paper, I interviewed Lillian Mannino who is a Human Resource and Personnel Manager at the UC San Diego Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy. As a manager, Lillian serves as the link between the graduate school’s management and its employees. She is in charge of overseeing recruitment, employee relations, policy development, payroll, and benefits. Personnel management is a special branch of management that is focus on the concerns of employees at work and their relationship with the organization. Her educational experiences consist of a bachelor degree at UC San Diego in Management Science and a professional Human Resources certificate from UCSD Extension. She has been working in the academic administration for almost ten years and earned her current position as manager through climbing up the ladder. She started off working in this field as a student affairs officer then was promoted to an administrative specialist. Her prior work experience paved a path for her to build up professional experience as well as a solid network within the UCSD administrative system.

Prior to coming to Hoke County, Dr. Williamson had already served in a plethora of diverse roles in his educational career (e.g., teacher, assistant principal, vocational-educational director, principal, director of secondary and middle school education, director of personnel, associate superintendent, and a boys and girls basketball coach), therefore becoming a superintendent was inevitable; the school board knew he could advance the Hoke County’s School System, however the “key” was: he was a willing vessel.

I, Marion Forbes the recently appointed senior human resources manager at Hallington Utilities Services (HUS), am facing with a dilemma; work out HR strategies with the Organizations mission and handle employee’s issues and concerns. HUS has made changes due external and internal factors encountered in the market as well as the new regulations happening within the sector. All are very complicated and my main issues are privatizing, downsizing, unionization, motivation, training and compensation. With the information collected, I need to figure out

Finally and foremost, school districts need to get rid of tenure. It is absolutely insane to allow a teacher to have absolute job security no matter how badly they perform. If a teacher can teach they will always have a job. Tenure does not protect high performing teachers as it was intended to do instead it protects low performing teachers. This is vital in getting rid of horrible teachers like Mrs. Eicher who is immune to job loss as a result of how long they have worked at the school.

I have been working for Chicopee Public Schools for 2 years. I truly believe this is the best job I’ve ever had. The flexibility of my job is what I love the most. The only interaction I’ve had with Human Resources was when I got hired and when I have questions about benefits. We will dig deeper into my human resources department. We will explore issues involving retention, organizational growth, employee morale, and workplace demographics. I will narrow these four areas down to one and discuss ways to fix the issues.

When dealing with larger school districts, there are several different positions in which play vital roles in the success of the school ‘s in the county. Deputy superintendent, chief financial officers, executive directors, and chief technology officer, are the crucial four. From there smaller roles are delegated to address issues based on needs and situations that may happen with schools, students teachers and

At one of her first press conferences, Rhee stated, “I know what the obstacles are in these systems that are not conducive to affecting change.” (Dingerson, 2010) “These were haunting words to the many veteran teachers of the DCPS”, the author of this article states. (Dingerson, 2010) Michelle Rhee came into this position in a judgmental way, not taking the time to research and study the specific problem. Instead, she brought about sweeping changes, which focused on reducing the power that teachers with tenure and their union had. (Dingerson, 2010)

In the business world, each year is different from the other, same goes for the academic division. It is a fact that people come and people go for all types of reasons. Change is forever arising, sometimes for the better or worse. Within the middle school athletics level there are 13 Athletic Directors (AD) positions and 160 or more coaching positions, dependent on each teams’ participation. AD’s and coaches are paid employees of the district. The AD’s supervise the coaches at their individual school buildings or act as a sports liaison within their assigned school. The coaches simply coach. Many of our coaches have experience in the sport they are coaching, but sometimes we need a “warm body” or parent/volunteer to coach a team. In the area of Athletics you are always asked to work or volunteer more than you get paid. In most cases if you put in 40 hours weeks then you are paid for 40 hours. In athletics you may put in 40 hours and are only compensated 15 hours. The middle school AD position is part-time and pays 10-12 hours per week. So you can imagine the high turnover rate for AD’s. Coaches are paid based on their experience in the sport they are coaching. The coaches is pay is a percentage of the teacher’s contract. It can range from 3-5% of $37,600 and the teacher’s contract varies from year to year. The Athletics Department made a direct observation and diagnosed several problems identified above which were the high turnover

Bohlander and S. Snell. (2011). Managing Human Resources, 6th Edition. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Nelson Education Ltd., p. 175.