Area Schools Search For Teachers

While many of us scramble to fill the list of required items our children need for school, there'...  More »

While many of us scramble to fill the list of required items our children need for school, there's another mad dash going on within the school itself. That's the mad dash to find teachers. Debbie Kuehn reports on the increasingly-difficult effort to fill classrooms with qualified instructors. Like the disappearance of the ink well, the outhouse or the slate, gone are the traditional ways schools hire teachers. David Wisthoff/ Glenburn School Supt.- You advertised it and then you got your twenty applications, and turn around and the three or four that best, and then you interviewed them and chose one. Well, now, you go out and find people and you just hope you can find somebody. For rural school superintendents, these are times that can test one's patience and tenacity. From thet time classes dismiss in the spring, until the bell rings in the fall, many administrators find themselves trying to come up with creative solutions... Kelly Taylor/ MLS School Supt.-So we asked two former teachers of our school system to come and fill in for a year. So one 's going to teach the first half of the year and the second's going to work the second half of the year... which was a unique way of doing it. They're both not real excited about it. They're retired. Kelly-For young people coming out of school, they don't understand that paying for both sides of TFFR, that's a big plumb for long-term dollars. So we did that. David- Class size is one thing, our class size is a lot smaller. And discipline is limited... you know, very little discipline problems. I think we are trying to be as competitive as we can with salaries as well. And classroom positions aren't the only challenging jobs to fill... David- (So come August 21st are you going to be driving a bus?) Possibly driving a bus, yeah, good chance of it! With a sigh of relief, these administrators say thankfully, they're ready for school to start, but they realize the work's going to get harder and harder... Kelly-The state's going to have to look at ways to encourage people to come out rurally... local school districts are going to have to look at changing their mindset and going to a more aggressive stance or a more creative stance to create ways to find staff members. School officials say that's a lesson we're going to have to tackle together. Debbie Kuehn KX News. For many area students, school begins next week.  « Less