Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Staffing And Recruitment topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Interim deputy superintendent: teacher separations fall to lowest 15-year level; recruiting and ‘grow your own’ efforts continue
Summary
Interim Deputy Superintendent Drew Tone reported a drop in teacher separations and outlined recruiting and retention efforts, including apprenticeship and transition-to-teach programs.
Interim Deputy Superintendent Drew Tone told the Garden City Board of Education that teacher separations and overall staff turnover have decreased substantially compared with recent years, and he credited building-level leadership and local recruiting for gains in retention.
"Last year, we had 39 teacher separations," Drew Tone said during his staff update, adding that two recent resignations raised the count to 41. He said total separations districtwide were 53, the lowest in the district’s available 15-year record. Tone compared that with historical averages of 80 to 100 separations and with national teacher-separation averages above 20 percent.
Tone said the district had 63 total hires for the upcoming year, including 47 local hires and 16 international hires, and that the district began the year with about 30 long-term substitutes, 18 of whom are working to obtain professional teaching licensure. He described a larger effort to "grow your own" teachers through multiple pathways: student-teacher placements (12 student teachers this fall), an apprenticeship program that places students with master teachers over multiple years, a transition-to-teach pathway for nontraditional candidates and participation in the RTAP program that provides tuition reimbursement through a Kansas state grant for degree-holders entering teaching.
On substitutes, Tone said the district achieved a 92 percent daily substitute fill rate last year, up from rates in the 60s and 70s immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the district currently has about 116 daily substitute teachers in its pool and is onboarding more.
Tone also said the district eliminated nine ESE positions and three administrative positions earlier in the year while seeking to shield building-level staffing from future budget cuts. Board members and other speakers praised the staffing report; one board member asked for comparative turnover data from similarly sized employers in the county.
No formal action was taken on the staffing report; it was provided as an information update to the board.
