Riverdale Administration Prioritize Internal Growth in Hiring Process
Filling the nearly 300 faculty and staff positions at Riverdale is no small task for the school’s hiring committees. From math teachers to kitchen staff to teachers for Riverdale’s on-site daycare for the children of Hill School faculty, a quick look at the “Careers” page of the Riverdale website shows just how many roles there are to fill.
In the years following the COVID pandemic, New York City’s population has declined by 500,000 residents, causing a labor shortage. However, staffing at Riverdale has remained consistent, which Head of Upper School Mr. Mike Velez has attributed to Riverdale’s emphasis “beyond the financial piece” on “understanding what the aspirations of [Riverdale faculty] are and [providing] room within the organization for them to grow professionally in ways that they aspire to do so.”
In that vein, the New York State Department of Labor’s 2024 Report on Significant Industries in New York City found that educational services—the category into which Riverdale falls—is the fifth largest industry, with over 395,000 jobs between the public and private sectors. In spite of New York City’s declining population, the educational services sector has grown by nearly 4,000 jobs in the last five years and is expected to grow by a total of approximately 15,000 by the end of the decade.
According to Assistant Head of Upper School and Dean of Student Life Ms. Julie Choi, Riverdale aims to combat the increased competition in the hiring pool of New York City teachers through the creation of two distinct positions: Dean of Academics and Dean of Faculty, the responsibilities of which a single individual previously held. Designating a specific Dean of Faculty will enable Riverdale to “focus on not only the recruitment and hiring of faculty, but also the retention and the talent development,” said Mr. Velez. “Talent development” means creating opportunities for existing faculty to rise to higher positions through the creation of professional development opportunities, and ensuring that searches prioritize applicants within the school. A lot of the data is pointing to the fact that schools in the years to come are going to have to develop talent from within and hire from within for key administrative roles.”
This is true of the two administrative positions that were filled earlier this academic year: Dean of Faculty and Dean of Academics, as well as the ongoing search for the next Head of Upper School. “The plan for the next Head of Upper School is to keep the search internal,” said Mr. Velez. Even though the last search for a Head of Upper School was conducted externally with the help of an executive search firm, the search for the next candidate for the role “will not differ that much from the last time,” said Ms. Choi. Like all of Riverdale’s searches, the hiring committee for the next Head of Upper School will adhere to “a predetermined set of steps,” standardized across hiring committee activities school-wide, a measure instituted to ensure against bias in the selection process, Ms. Choi added.
The push to develop talent from within is not only rooted in the shrinking pool of applicants with which Riverdale must contend, but also from a financial standpoint. “I would say [that for] more and more schools, given the economic model that we work with, it’s not financially sustainable nor wise to keep hiring from the outside,” said Mr. Velez. According to Bloomberg, the cost of hiring a new employee has increased by 14% in the last five years. Combined with the competitive salaries Riverdale offers compared with comparable job postings from Avenues, Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Trinity, it makes the most financial sense for Riverdale to promote and recruit from within.
Though there are many demographic and financial factors at play when it comes to the future of hiring administrators, what draws prospective faculty the most to Riverdale is its “rigorous high-challenge, high-support model of teaching and learning… and [its] community,” Mr. Velez emphasized. In the years since the pandemic, living and working in New York City has changed, but Riverdale’s ongoing adjustments to these new realities will see the School well-equipped to weather the changing job market moving forward.
