Q: What is The Learning Center?

A: The Learning Center (TLC) is a central hub for the alignment of performance management systems.  The Learning Center will house and provide quality training and professional human development for all personnel in Douglas County School District.

All district department training needs will be coordinated through TLC. TLC will provide a development blueprint for all employee groups, similar to the building leadership blueprint distributed to administrators this year.

Q: What's the Mission?

A: The Learning Center’s mission is to provide comprehensive, quality professional development opportunities for all District staff. Through monitoring and aligned performance indicators, all training will be delivered with fidelity, agility, and quality, within the evaluation system, while being responsive to the needs of the organization. It is our desire to invest in our staff development in an effort to positively impact learning and leadership across the District.

Q: How is this different than the Staff Development we’ve had in the past?

A: The Learning Center process is not necessarily different; it is an effort to help current Staff Development processes keep up with District growth by becoming even more efficient and comprehensive. TLC will ultimately measure and monitor the effectiveness of training through benchmarking impact on staff performance and student achievement, by replicating a blueprint model for performance management and aligning benchmarks for our trainings with employee evaluations.  We hope to be able to identify a direct link from increased staff knowledge and skills to measurable increased student achievement.

Q: What about Skills Blocks and Performance Pay?

A: Stakeholders surveyed have strongly endorsed District skill block opportunities as part of Performance Pay. The Learning Center will seek to enhance these opportunities, and provide a stronger connection to each employee groups’ evaluation “indicators.”  TLC will compliment the overarching goal of aligning human development to performance management.

In other words, a clear and measurable linkage to how specific trainings impact student learning.

Q: What role does the Building Resource Teacher play in all of this? 

A: BRTs will continue their strong work around teacher induction in their buildings. BRT’s, will remain within Learning Services, but will no longer fall under “staff development.” A sub-committee is currently revising the BRT job description.  Building principals will continue to supervise and evaluate BRT job performance, with a stronger role coming from The Directors of Schools and Curriculum and Instruction.

Q: So what are The Learning Center’s Priorities?

A: Our first priority is District Waivers and establishing a pathway for Alternative Licensure and Endorsement for teachers.  A curriculum design team is currently developing the course descriptions. Selection of in-district talent and instructors will follow, with key application and hiring process presented to principals.

A second priority is the replication of the Leadership Blueprint “model” for all employee subgroups. Our goal is to streamline the induction process while integrating eLearning opportunities for employees. There will be a concerted effort to align the performance indicators of all employee evaluation instruments with training and development opportunities. Classified Employee Blueprints are close to completion, and the teacher evaluation instrument is also being refined.

Bringing higher education cohorts into a partnership with the district is also underway.  Through the district website, the Learning Center will be able to organize and communicate the various opportunities for employees to explore advanced degrees and cohorts in one place. The intention is to enhance our succession planning for the talented educators and leaders within the District, and collaborate the instruction with some of our own college instructors, or teachers teaching each other.