Staff & Educator Highlights

Innovation Inside and Outside the Classroom

As part of Vision 2031, Hopkins aspires to be a destination school district, attracting the best and brightest employees. Our staff are empowered to be agents of change and primary drivers for re-imagining school from the ground up. Here are a few innovations that have been created by Hopkins staff and educators:

• Outdoor learning flourished in the pandemic and created a new model for how to do school in all seasons and led to our outdoor environmental school.

• Freedom School is not new, but it is new to Hopkins and was added to our summer program by a Hopkins educator. Freedom School provides a rigorous summer school curriculum in an affirming environment centered in community and parent engagement.

• Our instructional leadership group is co-led by teachers from early childhood through grade 12 who help bring cutting-edge concepts and practices into the classroom.

• Glen Lake teachers and their students co-led the school’s playground accessibility initiative. They collaborated to design a fully accessible playground and the story was covered on local and national prime time news. To date, they have raised nearly $1 million.

• Teachers at Hopkins are committing their instruction to align with the Science of Reading to give kids the best possible literacy education.

• Hopkins hires native Spanish and Mandarin Chinese speakers who create a positive and authentic immersion experience for our students.

Representation Matters

Just like leadership and teacher quality matter, representation also matters. While we have a responsibility to hire teachers of color, we also have a duty to hire teachers who reflect the many unique identities represented by students throughout our classrooms.

21% of Our Workforce is comprised of staff of color

385% Increase in staff of color hires between 2017 and 2023

1,331 Educators & Staff across Hopkins Public Schools

11 Median Years of teaching experience

72% of Educators at Hopkins have master's degrees or beyond

+80 Educators are trained in the Science of Reading (LETRS) to date

11 Hopkins Educators have been candidates for Minnesota Teacher of the Year between 2021 and 2023

Hopkins Schools has a Higher Percentage of Licensed Staff of Color when compared to other Minnesota school districts

Studies show that Black students who have at least one Black teacher between grades K-12 increases their likelihood of going to college.