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Amarillo ISD Summary Report

Here's What
so What
now What
Celebrating a big year of impact together.
2024/25

Amarillo ISD Summary Report

Background

This snapshot report provides an overview of AISD’s partnership with PeopleBench, the district’s workforce transformation co-pilot, over the 2024-2025 school year.
Framework
No. of participants
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AISD’s investment in their leaders to measure and develop their workplace resilience is a key ingredient of the district’s broader retention strategy.
Resilience involves being able to withstand and overcome adversity and unpleasant or difficult events successfully and to be able to adapt to change and uncertainty. 
McEwen, 2011
Today’s K-12 education leaders operate complex, high-pressure environments where they must consistently adapt to challenges while maintaining a focus on student success. This requires resilience. Furthermore, a leader’s capacity to influence change and improve school impact can be grown over time. Workplace resilience is about sustaining optimal organizational performance through change or adversity over the long-term. Organizations who invest in building the resilience and capability of their leaders and teams report smoother, faster and sustained change as a result of:

improved staff engagement

improved staff health and well-being

improved ROI on change initiatives

reduced organizational disruption

reduced change implementation timeframes

Resilient school leadership for principals is an important accelerant and enabler of systemic improvement. Given AISD’s goal to retain a high-performing and diverse staff, it makes good sense to invest in building the leadership capability of the district’s principals, deputy-principals and district Leaders – to help them make the connection between their leadership practices and building resilient, sustainable, high-impact schools.
SO WHAT

Project details

Amarillo ISD partnered with PeopleBench to support their strategic workforce transformation by strengthening leader resilience through individual data collection, professional development and 1:1 coaching, positioning wellbeing as a cornerstone of leader effectiveness, staff retention, and student success. In order to advance this work, PeopleBench:
Facilitated a 60 min virtual kick-off session

Facilitated a 60 min virtual kick-off session with all participants to introduce the concept of workplace resilience as a critical workforce metric. Together we previewed the learning ahead, as well as aligned on project goals and intended outcomes.
Administered the Individual Leader Resilience diagnostic (Individual R@W)

A confidential self- assessment against the R@W scale, and supplied each participant with a unique report outlining their current levels of resilience, and identified areas that they may wish to focus on in order to improve their capacity to perform in their role amid the inevitable changes and challenges of school life.
Facilitated a day-long training with AISD leaders

On the key concepts of leadership and resilience and invited participants to consider how they can improve their own experience of work, and the experience of leading others, through new and/or changed work practices.
Supplied highly skilled executive coaches

To meet twice with each individual leader to support them with reviewing and processing their data, and making a plan for putting the data into practice.

Data Trends

PeopleBench takes confidentiality and privacy very seriously. As a result, the nature of our engagement with individuals via the 1:1 coaching sessions precludes us from providing commentary on individuals within the group. As a group, however, the following challenge and opportunities have been identified as themes across the group. It is important to note that there will be members of the group who do not experience these themes as their “top” challenges or opportunities, and that among the group there will be many specific challenges and opportunities not identified in these themes.

Trending Challenges

Areas to focus improvement and support.

Emotional Load & Isolation

Leaders often carry the stress of their teams and communities without adequate peer or systemic support.
Work-Life Integration & Personal Wellbeing

Many leaders struggle to prioritize their own health, energy, and balance, despite understanding its importance.
Change Fatigue

Ongoing leadership transitions and structural changes (e.g., school configurations, retirements) are creating anxiety and uncertainty across the system.

Trending Opportunities

areas to build on foundations.

Strong leader commitment to culture-building and staff care.

Growing understanding that resilience is a learnable, developable skill.

Use of the R@W Framework and coaching to generate practical, personalized growth strategies.

Program Impact

Leaders are implementing strategies to manage stress, set boundaries, and lead more intentionally.

Greater self-awareness and clarity about how personal resilience drives collective performance.

Early signs of culture shift – more open dialogue about wellbeing and leadership sustainability.

Resilience enables K-12 education leaders to continue to perform their work optimally in the face of adversity – qualities essential for leading schools that support every student’s success.

AISD is building a workforce culture where resilience is no longer reactive, it’s strategic. By investing in the health and sustainability of its leaders, the district is laying the foundation for long-term success. In order to sustain the impact of this work into next school year, PeopleBench recommends AISD:

Institutionalize resilience

by embedding the R@W Framework into leadership development and mentoring systems.

Prioritize connection

by facilitating networking, peer mentoring, and wellness-focused leadership PLCs.

Model the message

by encouraging leaders to be visible in modeling balance, boundaries, and vulnerability.

While AISD has invested in measuring and developing the resilience of its leaders through professional learning, the district has recently reported an increase in the social and emotional needs of all staff, not just leaders (based on data from the district’s 2024-2025 District Improvement Plan).

International research highlights the importance of school systems taking an holistic and strategic approach to improving staff resilience, where professional learning occurs in response to needs data, and where resilience data is considered alongside other core HR information (for example, turnover and teacher absenteeism).

To address the root cause of resilience challenges – the lack of a districtwide program of support to address the wellbeing of staff (per the District’s Improvement Plan) – PeopleBench recommends AISD:

Administer the Resilience at Work all-staff tracker to measure and develop the resilience of all AISD employees.

This districtwide initiative directly addresses Problem Statement 8 from the District’s Improvement Plan. Additionally, longitudinal PeopleBench customer data shows that resilience is statistically correlated with staff retention, meaning higher staff resilience can increase the likelihood of employee retention in AISD.

Administer the Resilience at Work Individual Diagnostic to the district leadership team

in the fall of 2025 and the spring of 2026 as well as provide quarterly executive coaching sessions to continue to monitor the wellbeing and professional growth of district leaders.

Given the district has recently appointed a new Superintendent and Chief Human Resource Officer, PeopleBench recommends AISD:

Conduct a workforce data landscape analysis

to consolidate relevant employee data stored across multiple systems into a single report to uncover critical trends and data gaps – supplying AISD with the additional expertise and capacity to unlock greater value from the data you already have, and to inform an evidence based workforce improvement roadmap for the future. This analysis will provide the Superintendent and CHRO with a current/historical district workforce profile, including workforce strengths and risks, that will serve as an anchor for future strategic staffing decisions and workforce priority development.
We look forward to continuing this work with AISD as the district continues to shift their staffing focus from “what’s now” to “what’s next.”

DID YOU KNOW...

1 out of 3 teachers and 4 out of 10 principals are expected to leave the profession in the next three years? The time is now to build the pipeline of aspiring leaders in your District-and to retain your current teachers and staff to ensure they operate at their fullest potential.

The process??

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Reserve your coach.

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to the 2024 State of the Sector Survey.

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