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As school districts across the country face increasing challenges in hiring and retaining high-quality teachers and staff, the actions leaders take to collaboratively shape and sustain district culture matter more than ever.

There are many effective strategies districts use to attract new employees initially onto the team, including offering competitive salaries and benefits, but district culture can determine whether they want to actually stay. Nurturing a sense of belonging, explicitly letting teachers and staff know they are valued, and affirming that their work matters, can play a key role in their decision to stay long term.

So, what is the magic solution to developing a district culture in which teachers and staff thrive and want to stay?

Seasoned leaders will agree that there is no one right approach; rather, culture is created through multiple efforts that foster a mindset of teamwork, kindness, encouragement and support, professionalism, sense of belonging, and mutual respect. This kind of positive culture does not, however, happen by accident. It requires intentionality.

Intentional Efforts in Roanoke County

In Roanoke County Public Schools (Va.), being intentional with sustained efforts to maintain a healthy, productive district culture has led to positive outcomes such as a teacher retention rate of over 95%.

These efforts are rooted in our comprehensive C-Change Framework, which recognizes that student performance outcomes like deeper learning and the development of durable transfer skills are not produced in a vacuum. Student outcomes are conditioned on supporting factors including culture and climate affecting students, as well as teachers and staff.

Being intentional about attending to district culture is especially important in a larger district like Roanoke County. With multiple high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, it is easy for teachers and staff to feel part of their individual schools, while feeling disconnected from the district as a whole.

To create a sense of unity and teamwork across the district, we kick off each school year with a districtwide convocation event that brings all teachers together for a celebration of district accomplishments and inspiration from keynote speakers and me, as the superintendent. Throughout the year, I, as superintendent, reinforce annual themes and elevate exemplary programs through regular newsletter communication to all teachers and staff.

Valuing and Seeing Individuals

We want teachers and staff to feel part of the collective district team, but we also understand that they want to be valued for their individual contributions. Two new programs have been instrumental in helping individual employees feel like they are seen.

One new initiative has invited all employees to elevate their colleagues by nominating them for recognition awards in categories like teamwork, kindness, golden attitude, and difference maker and letting us know specific ways their colleague exemplifies these traits. Everyone who is nominated is recognized and colleagues may be nominated in multiple categories.

Service Pins

The second new initiative has involved visiting each school and recognizing each employee with a service pin for each five years of service, rather than just waiting until retirement to be honored.

In this first year of the program, nearly every employee has received a service pin. For classroom teachers and assistants, this has meant being recognized by the superintendent and school board members in front of their class of students and inviting the students to join in celebrating the adults that work with them each day.

The reactions of teachers and staff have been heartfelt, with many responding with tears of gratitude as we have expressed appreciation for their service. Even more gratifying has been to see and hear the reaction of students who, in most cases, spontaneously erupt in applause and cheers in celebration of their teacher.

In a school district with over 2,000 employees, presenting a service pin to every employee with five or more years of service has taken considerable time and coordination. It has been time well spent. Presenting the service pins has contributed to the collective sense of goodwill toward district leadership, but, more importantly, it has made individual employees feel seen, appreciated, and valued; especially in a career field in which tangible financial rewards are often not the primary motivation for engaging in the work.

It has also provided unforeseen opportunities to plant seeds and encourage young students to consider teaching as a career choice. My standard response to the occasional student who tells me that he has been at the school for five years, and he, too, would like a pin, is to say that when he comes back in a few years to work at the school as a teacher, we will look forward to awarding him his first service pin!