(1) There is created in the department of education the school leadership program to provide embedded, experiential professional development to improve the quality of school principals and empower them to exercise distributive and collaborative leadership that supports collaboration among the professional educators in the school building. The purpose of the program is to increase educator retention, improve school climate and culture, and improve student academic outcomes by improving the quality of leadership in public schools. The program must include identification of high-quality school principals and the opportunity for other school principals from school districts throughout the state to observe and interact with the identified high-quality school principals and to receive professional development in leadership skills to learn the critical practices of the high-quality school principals in successful public schools. (2) The department shall design the program during the 2019-20 budget year and begin implementation of the program no later than July 2020. The department may contract with an entity with demonstrated, successful experience in providing training to school principals in distributive and collaborative leadership in Colorado or in other states to assist in designing and implementing the program. In selecting an entity, the department shall first consider entities that provide successful school leadership programs in Colorado that are similar to the program described in this section. The department shall ensure that the program design includes: (a) The method for identifying high-quality school principals and selecting a cohort of school principals from public elementary, middle, and high schools across the state who apply to participate in the professional development provided by the program; (b) The learning objectives and goals of the program, which must at a minimum include improving and enhancing positive school climate and culture and implementing distributive and collaborative leadership among the professional educators within a school; (c) The methods for achieving the learning objectives and goals, which must include direct observation of and interaction with identified high-quality school principals and experiential professional development in implementing distributive and collaborative leadership, developing collaboration among the professionals within the entire school building, and other leadership skills; and (d) The method for evaluating the success of the program in meeting the learning objectives and goals and in meeting the purpose described in subsection (1) of this section, including increasing educator retention, improving the school climate and culture, and improving student academic outcomes. The department may take into account information received through the teaching and learning conditions survey administered pursuant to section 22-2-503 in evaluating the success of the program; except that the department shall take the information into account in a year in which the response rate on the survey is at least sixty percent. (3) A school principal who seeks to receive training through the program must submit an application to the department in accordance with the time frames and procedures adopted by rule of the state board. The state board by rule shall specify the required contents of the application, which at a minimum must include evidence that the school principal's employer and building staff support the school principal's participation in the program. (4) The department, or the entity with which the department contracts, if any, shall select the school principals to receive professional development through the program for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 budget years, based on applications received pursuant to subsection (3) of this section. In selecting school principals to receive professional development through the program, the department and the entity, at a minimum, shall consider the level of performance, as determined pursuant to section 22-11-210, achieved by the public school at which the applying school principal is employed and any evidence that indicates the likelihood that a program of distributive and collaborative leadership would be successful in improving educator retention, school climate and culture, and student academic outcomes at the public school at which the applying school principal is employed. In selecting participants for the program, the department or the entity, to the extent practicable, shall select school principals employed in public elementary, middle, and high schools located in rural, suburban, and urban school districts throughout the state who are representative of the racial and gender demographics across the state. The department or the entity may select two or more school principals from a single school district. (5) Repealed. (6) The general assembly shall annually appropriate up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars to the department for the implementation of this part 2, including money to pay the costs of designing and implementing the program, which may include the cost of contracting with an entity as authorized in subsection (2) of this section.
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