Brevard Public Schools details workforce aims, cites HR system rollout and training needs
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Summary
District leaders presented the “Exceptional Workforce” segment of a revised five-year strategic plan, outlining four HR objectives including recruiting, professional development, retention and rollout of a new HR/ERP system; staff flagged potential fingerprinting delays and training needs for 8,000–9,000 employees.
Brevard Public Schools officials on the board meeting agenda presented the "Exceptional Workforce" portion of the district's revised five-year strategic plan, describing four objectives to recruit, develop and retain staff and to implement a new human-resources/enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
The district identified four objectives: recruit a strong pool of candidates; implement a comprehensive professional development framework for all district employees; retain staff across classifications; and implement a new HR/ERP system to reduce manual procedures. "Our third objective is retain a strong pool of candidates," HR presenter Mr. Dufresne said. "Once we get them here we want to treat them amazingly and keep them here." He said the professional-development goal covers all employees "anywhere from our bus drivers to finance" and intends to create leadership pathways and career ladders.
Why it matters: Board members and staff said the district already faces operational challenges that the plan must address. The ERP rollout will require substantial training: staff said the district will need to train between 8,000 and 9,000 employees to use the new system. Mr. Dufresne warned of a separate fingerprinting program the state is implementing that could delay new hires by "up to 2 weeks" in some cases, and described the ERP rollout as "a pretty heavy lift." He said the district aims to streamline manual procedures now handled in the current system, Beacon.
Board members pressed for concrete metrics. A board member asked about the district's target on turnover: the plan calls for reducing turnover by 15 percent; Mr. Dufresne said he did not have the current turnover rate on hand but would provide it to the board. The presenter also said weekly job-opening counts have fallen compared with last year: one Monday's listing showed 28 instructional classroom openings, versus about 179 at the same point last year.
On hiring speed, Mr. Dufresne said current average hire time is "under a week," but cautioned the new fingerprinting process could extend that for new hires who are not already in the state's system. Board members and HR staff discussed user experience problems with Beacon; one board member described applying to be a bus driver and encountering unintuitive menus that made openings hard to find. Mr. Dufresne said the new software should be more intuitive and compared it to earlier district software rollouts that were initially resisted but later widely adopted.
The presentation did not include a board vote or formal action on the strategic plan at this meeting. The board discussed the need for additional staff support for HR and requested follow-up data on current turnover and hiring metrics.
The district said further, more detailed metrics and strategies are available in the plan documents and will be revisited in future board sessions.
