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Canyon City Schools outlines staffing picture, retention goals and HR priorities
Summary
Director of human resources Jamie Davis told the Board of Education the district employs about 600 people, is working to close an $11,000 gap with the state average teacher salary, and is prioritizing pipelines, induction and an additional HR manager FTE to handle rising administrative workload.
Jamie Davis, director of human resources for Canyon City Schools, told the Board of Education on April 28 that the district employs about 600 people and is focusing on hiring, retention and building career pathways for educators.
Davis said the average teacher salary in Colorado is "around 72,000. And in our school district, it's around 61,000," and described district efforts to narrow that gap. She also reported that the district’s applicant pool has grown: the district averaged 4.6 applicants per posting this year, exceeding a three‑year goal.
Why it matters: staffing and pay affect how readily the district can fill classrooms with licensed personnel, Davis told the board. The HR presentation outlined short‑term strategies the district is using to staff classrooms, and longer‑term efforts to develop local pipelines from paraprofessional and substitute roles into licensed teaching positions.
Davis said Canyon City has increased its substitute pool and has used long‑term substitutes who are completing teacher preparation programs as a way to fill openings without closing classes. "We continue to employ around 600 employees," she said, and noted the district has not had to close classrooms for lack of hires, though some positions have been filled with long‑term substitutes.
The presentation included several quantitative details the board discussed: a roughly $11,000 difference between the district average teacher pay and the state average; an approximately 6 percent turnover rate for district administrators; and a principal induction program that currently enrolls four participants. Davis said the district is improving state reporting accuracy and that recent process changes have made historical comparisons more reliable.
Davis described pathway and development work intended to strengthen the local talent pool: events for potential educators, CTE licensing expansion at the high school level, paraprofessional‑to‑teacher programs and a focus on distributed leadership and team‑based teaching models. She said the district aims to pay student teachers earlier by employing them as paid paraprofessionals where appropriate.
On department capacity, Davis urged the board to maintain an HR manager position (an FTE) to handle data, special projects and an increased workload driven by legislative and compliance changes. She said the district has seen "more leave of absence than we've ever seen before" and more investigations and record requests that fall to HR. She described that legislative and compliance work—Title IX requirements, public‑record requests, and other investigations—has increased staff workload and diminished time available for employee customer service and development work.
Superintendent Adam Hartman said he has begun year‑end administrative evaluations and noted alignment between the board’s visioning work and the HR plan. "I have now completed all of the end of year evaluations," Hartman told the board. He and Davis indicated they would bring HR data and the district’s back‑end metrics to a future work session so the board could review indicators and measurement methods.
Other items Davis highlighted included the district's use of the Red Rover application system, an inaugural all‑staff social the HR department organized, and ongoing work on workforce housing and staff mentoring. She said the district expects to continue work on professional growth goals and the licensed personnel performance evaluation system.
Discussion at the meeting touched on professional development, the timing and impact of the staff social, and bargaining work with classified employees; board members generally praised the HR team's direction and the emphasis on pipelines and retention. Davis offered to return to a work session for a deeper dive into proposed team‑based teaching pilots and workforce pipeline initiatives.
What’s next: Davis and Hartman said they will present more detailed HR metrics and the backend strategic‑plan indicators at a future work session for board review and follow‑up.
