(A previous version of this story referenced Dr. Kelly Withers as RSS Director of Schools. Withers’ title is superintendent.)

ROWAN COUNTY — Beginning in the fall semester, five campuses in the Rowan-Salisbury Schools system will participate in a pilot program called Opportunity Culture.

RSS Chief Resources Officer Carol Herndon presented information about the program to the school board on Monday, where she described it as an “innovative staffing model to address teacher shortage and hard-to-staff and high-need schools.”

According to the Opportunity Culture website, the model works by a “group of teachers and administrators (determining) how to use the Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) role and other teaching team roles to reach all students with excellent teaching and small-group instruction and pay teachers more.”

MCLs lead a small teaching team, providing “on-the-job coaching” while continuing to teach, often by leading small-group instruction. Those MCLs are accountable for the results of all the students in the team and then earn stipend supplemants “averaging 20 percent” of their salary. 

Next, the program has reach teachers that provide instructional leadership in the classroom, followed by team reach associates that might handle smaller group activities outside of the classroom such as individualized tutoring. 

The pilot program will be administered at China Grove, Granite Quarry, Hanford-Dole, Hurley and Millbridge elementary schools. 

“We have a district design consideration team that has been contemplating this opportunity for our district throughout the first semester,” Herndon said. “We have been exploring this possibility and are at a point where we want to kick off this pilot.” 

In addition to Herndon, that six-person team consists of Superintendent Dr. Kelly Withers; Executive Director of Middle Schools Karla Black; Director of Federal Programs Jerri Hunt; Chief Academic Officer Sajata Latten; and Director of Recruitment and Induction Amanda Macon.

Herndon said during the meeting that the pilot program is aligned with the RSS strategic plan in that it invests in talent, specifically recruiting, retaining and developing the system’s workforce. 

By expanding roles for certain teachers, Herndon said that the program also expands their career ladder.

RSS is able to explore this opportunity because it was the recipients of a grant along with four other districts in the state. While the grant does cover travel and training expenses for these enhanced roles, it will not pay for the stipends.

“We will pay for that with budgets attached to vacancies that we cannot fill,” Herndon said. 

How does it work?

“In this space, you implement layers of highly-qualified instructional resources to manage larger class sizes,” Herndon said. 

That means accepting larger class sizes.

“But we equip them with a layer of highly-qualified staff,” Herndon said. “We attract staff to those positions by offering significant stipends to compensate for the additional responsibility.”

“We are just starting the school-level design process,” Herndon said. “The first roll your sleeves up heavy duty work is later this month in person with our other cohort districts in Raleigh. We will have representatives from our schools there to start designing how this works for Rowan-Salisbury School, as well as a couple of folks from our district design team going as well because we want to do this in partnership with our schools, but obviously, we want them to take the lead because they will own the implementation of this work going forward.”

Herndon did not specify exactly how much the stipends would be but said that information would be disclosed in the future. 

Board member Lynn Marsh asked about larger class sizes in rooms that are the same size. 

“That is one of the things we hope to find out through the pilot,” Herndon said. ‘We may be limited in that regard.”

Marsh added that it sounded like the multi-age instruction she was familiar with working with EC students at China Grove Elementary School. 

“I know (with) the accommodations and the room size, the way it works, you have to kind of start off small and then think bigger,” Marsh said. “It is a challenge when you go across grade levels.”

Board member Dean Hunter questioned how the program would work when the school system is currently unable to find staff to fill those vacancies.

“You still have to hire people,” Hunter said. “We don’t have people now, which is why we need to get people, so they are giving more money to get people to fill positions that we should already have?”

Herndon said that it’s not as simple as comparing apples to apples. 

“We are redefining the roles, with the MCLs, the reach teachers and reach associates,” Herndon said, adding that it’s about layers of instructional support and that those roles should not be viewed as just teachers. 

“We don’t know if it will work or not,” she said. “But, we have to do something meaningful and different … we feel like with the support of the grant and learning what it is and how to do it and give it a shot, we don’t have anything to lose by at least trying it on.”