Hello Everyone,
We are getting very close. I realize that the site may not look like it is nearly ready, but it really is. We want to give you an update on our progress and our plans. This is intended to be a starting point. Many of our details are still unclear. We commit to you now that we will keep you updated as we move through the process. The Waterstone Blog will continue to be our primary means of communication, but you can also reach us by email with specific questions.
Here is a brief contact list:
Issues relating to:
Christa Niven, Director- christaniven@thelittleschool.net
The building and new campus
Finances
Donations
Partnership or investment opportunities
Secondary contact for hiring
Oversight of policy and procedure creation
Oversight of staff recruiting
Marketing
Volunteer organization
Jennifer Dock, Director- jennifer@thelittleschool.net
The building and new campus
Curriculum development and implementation
Portfolio development and implementation
Oversight of staff development and training
Classroom compilations
Marketing
Wendy Vavrousek, Program Manager- wendy@thelittleschool.net
Staff development and training
Staff management
Curricular implementation
Special services creation and implementation
Joann Milano, Human Resources Manager- joann@thelittleschool.net
Staff recruiting and screening
Policy and procedure creation
Staff orientation
Mary Swanson, Admission Manager- mary@thelittleschool.net
Enrollment of new families
Collection and organization of admission materials
Primary contact for new families
If there are any questions or concerns that are not obviously captured by the above descriptions please email Christa at christaniven@thelittleschool.net
Here is an incomplete list of Frequently Asked Questions that we hope to use as a starting point for our transition conversation. Please know that we welcome any and all questions, but do ask that you read through these first.
1. When is the school going to open?
Our site superintendent has told us that we are moving along at exactly the predicted pace for this point in the project. We are going to begin to landscape and paint in October. The site work required for our Temporary Certificate of Occupancy includes asphalt and gravel for the driveway. Those pieces have been ordered and should be done in the coming weeks. As long as we stay on track we will have the building ready to apply for final Certificate of Occupancy on December 1. We are estimating that we will need two weeks to move all of the materials into place before we are ready to ask our day care licensing person to license us to open. REMEMBER- EVERY TOY AND BLOCK MUST BE IN PLACE BEFORE WE WILL RECEIVE DAY CARE LICENSING PERMISSION TO OPEN. It is not the case that we can paint the walls and open the doors. Any and all help will be most welcome once we arrive at moving weekend.
2. Have you hired all of the new teachers yet?
We are very actively hiring teachers right now. Our current staff of fifteen will be spread throughout the building so that one of our current teachers will (most likely) be in each of our eleven new classrooms. We are receiving incredible resumes and are beginning to make final hiring decisions. This economy has provided us a truly top notch pool to choose from. Please see the August 7, 2009 Waterstone Blog Glimpse for more information about our hiring process.
Mr. Sean and Ms. Rachel will be staying on in the half-day program and will be working closely with the other teachers hired for the half-day program.
3. When will you finalize all of the hiring?
We will have all of the staff hired by November 1, 2009.
4. How will the teams be configured?
We will be bringing the staff together for a series of team meetings in November. We will be spending time getting to know each other in order to find the best fit. The great news is that all of our candidates (without exception) are very well educated and trained folks with great prior experience so we have some flexibility in allowing teams to come together based on personality AS WELL AS best age group fit.
5. Who will my child's teacher be?
The honest answer is that we do not know this yet. We won't know how the children will be placed into groups until two things happen:
1. All of the children need to be enrolled- we still have a limited number of openings available in all enrollment categories (full-day, half-day, full-week, part-week).
2. All of the teaching teams have to be configured. Once we have completed both of the tasks we will look at each child individually in order to find the best classroom AND teacher fit.
6. Will my currently enrolled child stay with their current teachers?
The current teaching teams will be broken up as the assistant and co-teachers take on lead and co positions. We will do EVERYTHING possible to keep our current children with at least one of their teachers. We understand that the parents want this as much as the teachers do. We are starting to shed some tears around TLS over the changes to come. While that is true, we are very much looking forward to inviting our new staff and children to join us. There will be lots of opportunities for children t continue to visit with their prior teams but every effort will be made to keep children and current teachers together whenever possible.
7. What is going on with the half-day program?
The half-day program is off to a great start. The children are adorable and we love having them with us. The classrooms are small, but so is the group size and the teachers are visiting the full-day classrooms and all of the playgrounds every day. This is a temporary solution that we think has been a tremendous success thus far.
We will move the half-day children into the full-day classrooms as soon as the Waterstone Campus opens. The broad age groupings currently in place will be spread a little as we move into the new classrooms. Those groupings will also be decided after we have completed enrollment and hiring.
8. Is there anything that I can do to help?
Yes, we have many upcoming events that will require a whole lot of help.
October: We will be spending most weekends at the new school installing our landscaping.
November: We will be painting and installing hardware, moving materials from the storage lockers to the new campus, assembling IKEA chairs and book shelves, and preparing the playgrounds. We have had several of our parent-artists volunteer to help us sand and refinish tables and chests as well as add the creative details that will make our building feel like our school. There is an awful lot to do so if you have an idea or a specific creative skill and would like to help please contact Christa to volunteer.
December: We will be putting materials on shelves and assembling centers in all of the classrooms. This will be a HUGE project and all forms of assistance will be more than greatly appreciated.
9. Will there be time for my child to meet their teachers prior to the first day?
Please see the Open House Invitation on the school website at http://www.thelittleschool.net/. We are very aware that we are going to be incredibly busy and pressed for time in December. While that is true, it is very important for us to provide opportunities to have the children see their new space. We will be working to provide additional opportunities. Please watch the blog.
Showing posts with label Hiring Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hiring Process. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Why Don't We Have Walls YET???
We wrote that exact sentence to our contractor this week. What he told us in response both makes us very excited AND very frustrated at the same time. This is his response to us:
We have completed underground electrical tie ins to the buildings and are now working on underground plumbing. Weather dependent, we should have the plumbing signed off in C and A building by early next week. The sheer footings are installed. Once we receive inspections, we will pour the slabs on C and A buildings. We still need final drawings on the B building.
Once we have slab on grade next week, we should begin framing right away.
Here are some lessons that we have learned:
1. Never build a building when you are the only project in town IF YOU HAVE A TIGHT TIMELINE. The reason: Because the inspectors have time to be on site every day inspecting daily what would normally be inspected monthly if at all. The inspections are ensuring that the new Little School building is the safest building that we can possibly build BUT it is also slowing everything way, way, way down.
2. Work with a local architect because they are familiar with the inspectors and their relationship will make the permitting and inspections process MUCH easier. This is particularly true in town and county-related code compliance issues. It does not seem like it should continue to be difficult to translate Hillsborough/Orange County codes into Durham County codes (our architect is in Durham County) and back again this late in the process but it truly is and it takes a tremendous amount of time to mobilize all of the architects and engineers to make changes that would be accounted for easily with a local architect.
3. Plan an extra six months into the time line. This is a DUH! but folks kept telling us that with things being as slow as they are in the building market that things would move very quickly. Refer to item #1 for an explanation of why that is not the case.
The truth is that our crew is moving as fast as they possibly can. We still have December 13th as our outside date and we are still being told that they want to bring it to a close earlier than that date. We really appreciate all of the hard work and dedication of our entire team- architects, engineers, builders, inspectors, and our wonderful project manager. These are incredible people who truly want the very best for this project and are going above and beyond in many instances to see that happen.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
**The half day program is on schedule for a September opening. Please check back next week for more information.
Glimpse:
Our staff are our family, our friends, our people and we love them. We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to be able to write that and mean it 100% when we do so. These people are incredibly precious to us and we want to do everything that we can to retain them. To that end, we have built a benefit package that we are very proud to offer them. The package currently includes health, life, dental and vision insurance benefits as well as paid leave, unpaid leave, paid holidays, and participation in several county and state staff-support programs.
In the year to come we are increasing all of our contributions to the insurance benefits as well as increasing the coverages offered to the staff. In addition, we are going to offer a cafeteria plan of additional coverages for the first time. We have contracted to offer flex spending accounts for all that are interested. Finally, we are
increasing our pay range for all positions at the new campus. Again, these are things that we are very proud of and we hope that these changes let our staff know that they are very important and beloved.
Having all of these things in place truly means that we have very little turn over in the staff and when we have an opening we tend to have dozens of applicants to choose from. When we post a job, we include a series of essay questions that we ask candidates to complete and submit along with their applications. We review answers as well as resumes at length before inviting anyone to visit the school. The candidate sees each of us and Mary for interviews on their first visit. If we all agree that we would like to see the candidate again we next have them complete a four hour meet and greet with the children in Mary's classroom. We then meet again to discuss the candidate. If we are still interested at that point we invite the candidate to return again for an eight hour in-class interview in the open classroom.
We have had candidates get all the way to that point who we have not
hired.
If at that point we are still confident in the candidate we offer a provisional offer of employment. We have them review our policies and complete their background and health paper work and hire them only after we have received those clearances AND supervised them in the classroom for 90 days. It is a LONG interview process. The reason is that we want to not only be sure that the person is right for us, but we want the candidate to be sure that we are right for them as well. This process is long but well worth the effort as the result is an incredibly cohesive group who truly enjoy working with children and with each other in our school.
We have completed underground electrical tie ins to the buildings and are now working on underground plumbing. Weather dependent, we should have the plumbing signed off in C and A building by early next week. The sheer footings are installed. Once we receive inspections, we will pour the slabs on C and A buildings. We still need final drawings on the B building.
Once we have slab on grade next week, we should begin framing right away.
Here are some lessons that we have learned:
1. Never build a building when you are the only project in town IF YOU HAVE A TIGHT TIMELINE. The reason: Because the inspectors have time to be on site every day inspecting daily what would normally be inspected monthly if at all. The inspections are ensuring that the new Little School building is the safest building that we can possibly build BUT it is also slowing everything way, way, way down.
2. Work with a local architect because they are familiar with the inspectors and their relationship will make the permitting and inspections process MUCH easier. This is particularly true in town and county-related code compliance issues. It does not seem like it should continue to be difficult to translate Hillsborough/Orange County codes into Durham County codes (our architect is in Durham County) and back again this late in the process but it truly is and it takes a tremendous amount of time to mobilize all of the architects and engineers to make changes that would be accounted for easily with a local architect.
3. Plan an extra six months into the time line. This is a DUH! but folks kept telling us that with things being as slow as they are in the building market that things would move very quickly. Refer to item #1 for an explanation of why that is not the case.
The truth is that our crew is moving as fast as they possibly can. We still have December 13th as our outside date and we are still being told that they want to bring it to a close earlier than that date. We really appreciate all of the hard work and dedication of our entire team- architects, engineers, builders, inspectors, and our wonderful project manager. These are incredible people who truly want the very best for this project and are going above and beyond in many instances to see that happen.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
**The half day program is on schedule for a September opening. Please check back next week for more information.
Glimpse:
Our staff are our family, our friends, our people and we love them. We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to be able to write that and mean it 100% when we do so. These people are incredibly precious to us and we want to do everything that we can to retain them. To that end, we have built a benefit package that we are very proud to offer them. The package currently includes health, life, dental and vision insurance benefits as well as paid leave, unpaid leave, paid holidays, and participation in several county and state staff-support programs.
In the year to come we are increasing all of our contributions to the insurance benefits as well as increasing the coverages offered to the staff. In addition, we are going to offer a cafeteria plan of additional coverages for the first time. We have contracted to offer flex spending accounts for all that are interested. Finally, we are
increasing our pay range for all positions at the new campus. Again, these are things that we are very proud of and we hope that these changes let our staff know that they are very important and beloved.
Having all of these things in place truly means that we have very little turn over in the staff and when we have an opening we tend to have dozens of applicants to choose from. When we post a job, we include a series of essay questions that we ask candidates to complete and submit along with their applications. We review answers as well as resumes at length before inviting anyone to visit the school. The candidate sees each of us and Mary for interviews on their first visit. If we all agree that we would like to see the candidate again we next have them complete a four hour meet and greet with the children in Mary's classroom. We then meet again to discuss the candidate. If we are still interested at that point we invite the candidate to return again for an eight hour in-class interview in the open classroom.
We have had candidates get all the way to that point who we have not
hired.
If at that point we are still confident in the candidate we offer a provisional offer of employment. We have them review our policies and complete their background and health paper work and hire them only after we have received those clearances AND supervised them in the classroom for 90 days. It is a LONG interview process. The reason is that we want to not only be sure that the person is right for us, but we want the candidate to be sure that we are right for them as well. This process is long but well worth the effort as the result is an incredibly cohesive group who truly enjoy working with children and with each other in our school.
