C6.09 - Approve the Agreement for Technical Services with Alma Advisory Group, LLC (Alma) (Leadership, Professional Development, and School Transformation)

The Alma contract is funded by the Title IV grant with a major component of the Title IV grant titled, Safe and Healthy Schools. This component allows districts to address programs or issues that impact student safety including physical, mental, and social and emotional health. This is done in Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) through the role of the school site Student Services teams , which includes Psychology, School Counseling, Social Work, Mental Health and Health. The contract with Alma will allow the Student Services team to conduct a deeper study into their service model to better align it with the needs of schools in order to enable intentional relationships with every student and proactively set up each student for success. 

The key activities that will be accomplished through the partnership will ultimately result in a change in management, communications and staff training. This plan will help the Student Services team achieve the following goals:
·     Meet commitments and improve student services delivery by providing those services more directly in each
      area or School Learning Network.
·     Balance district wide programmatic planning with direct service and site-based support.
·     Support effective management of programs by discipline.

* Recruit, support, and retain a highly effective and diverse workforce, * Develop a culture of respect, trust, collaboration and equity, * Continuously improve processes and systems

Alma consultants have supported HCPS for many years. They supported the design of the Principal Pipeline, specifically the selection, hiring, succession planning and evaluation processes for both aspiring and current leaders. The pipeline is a national model that is driving the work of many districts and getting results.  More recently, Alma supported the efforts of the Human Resources Division (HRD). They spent the past school year assisting HRD with redesigning processes with clear goals of recruiting and retaining cohorts of experienced teachers and leaders into Achievement Schools. Changes have been made to hiring timelines, recruitment efforts, and candidate processing and as a result, more vacancies are filled at this time than at the same time last school year. The district is at a 70 percent fill rate with a goal of being 100 percent filled in Achievement Schools.