School District Staffing Vendor

What districts actually evaluate in a staffing vendor

Strip away the pitch decks and vendor evaluation comes down to a short list of checkable things. Insurance: current certificates for workers' compensation, general liability, and professional liability, naming the district. Clearance documentation: not whether the vendor says candidates are cleared, but who runs the checks, where the records live, and how the district audits them mid-contract. References: named schools of comparable size that will take a call, not anonymized logos. Fill-rate accountability: how the vendor defines a fill, how often it reports, and what happens when the number slips. And a single point of contact — one person who owns the account, versus a ticket queue that reshuffles every quarter.

The second-order questions matter just as much. Who is the employer of record, and who carries payroll, taxes, and workers' comp for placed staff? What are the replacement terms when a placement fails in week three? What does converting a temp to a district employee cost? A vendor with good answers volunteers them; a vendor with bad answers sells harder. This page exists so you can score us against exactly that list.

What we screen for before a candidate carries our name

Every candidate we present, in every role type, passes the same core screen: a verified reliability history from prior schools, references we actually call, and a role-matched skills evaluation — classroom management for subs and teachers, de-escalation and personal-care comfort for paras, licensure and caseload management for clinicians. Clearances and certifications are table stakes, handled by the credentialing system; the screen is about judgment inside a school building.

It was designed by our founder, Robert Flom, a former K-12 teacher, which is why it tests for the situations schools actually produce rather than the ones interview guides imagine.

The vendor test: what happened at Odyssey

Odyssey Public Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware serves 1,000+ K-8 students drawn from five districts. The school had staffing agencies under contract, and those agencies could not fill the openings. FSG stepped in.

Since then we have filled 120+ roles across the school, spanning 13+ distinct role types — from bus drivers to certified teachers. Day-to-day substitute coverage runs at a 95% fill rate, a 40% improvement over the previous provider. The full case study, with the school's own account, is at /case-studies.

We lead with that story because it is the honest test of a staffing vendor: not the pitch deck, but what happens when the roles are hard and the incumbent has already failed.

One client per region, in writing

The structural problem with most education staffing vendors is that they serve your competitors. The same agency staffing your district is shopping the same candidates to the charter across town, and whoever pays more wins. FSG removed that conflict from the model: we work with one client per region. If you sign with us for your region, we will not supply a competing school or district, full stop.

Practically, that means the pipeline we build — the certified teachers, the paras, the clinicians we recruit in your area — is presented to you alone. Our clients include Christina School District, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Chambersburg Area SD, Chester Community Charter, Carmen Schools of Science & Tech, Breakthrough Public Schools, Leadership Public Schools, First PA, TRECA, and Odyssey Charter.

A founder from the classroom and a system that halves the wait

FSG was founded by Robert Flom, a former K-12 teacher, and we have spent 12 years staffing schools from our headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The founder's classroom background shapes vetting: candidates are interviewed by people who know what the job actually demands, then cleared, certification-verified, TB-tested, and reference-checked before you meet them.

Our automated credentialing system tracks every clearance and certification, flags expirations before they lapse, and keeps files audit-ready — which is why it cuts typical time-to-hire roughly in half. In past engagements we have placed certified special education teachers within two weeks, and we have run engagements where 100% of open roles were filled with 100% candidate retention.

Every placement is temp-to-perm at no cost: evaluate a professional in your building, and hire them permanently with no conversion fee. We also run school-supply and backpack donation drives for our partner schools, because we staff the communities we work in, not just the payrolls.