North Kansas City Schools on Tuesday outlined a broad recruitment and retention plan aimed at closing long-term staffing gaps and keeping experienced employees in the district.

Human-resources executive director Dr. Mark McCann told the school board the district now employs more than 3,500 people and has added dozens of positions in recent years. "We can expect that we're gonna need to hire about 200 teachers if we add no positions this year," McCann said, describing both the district's scale and the shrinking national pipeline of education graduates.

The presentation by McCann and intern Shannon C. Shelton described a nine-subcommittee task force created in 2025 to build a sustainable workforce strategy. The plan centers on five priority initiatives: an expanded recruitment radius and targeted six-month digital marketing campaigns; strengthened university partnerships and earlier recruitment of freshmen and sophomores; paid student-teacher pathways that the district began after securing a DESE grant; formal career-journey maps and compensation visualizations; and specialized mentorship and onboarding for experienced teachers new to the district.

Shelton said the task force has already produced a 30-page working packet and will send three surveys next week aimed at experienced teachers, new teachers and specialists (PT/OT/speech). "These are working documents," she told the board, emphasizing pilots and proposals will be funneled to HR for feasibility review before implementation.

McCann and Shelton highlighted several existing steps intended to strengthen the pipeline: paying student teachers (expanded from a DESE grant to district funding), hiring more student teachers (the district has grown to more than 50 student-teacher hires annually), expanding geographic recruitment and attending out-of-state hiring fairs, and creating pathways for paraprofessionals to pursue degrees and licensure.

Board members asked how effectiveness would be measured and whether unions and existing teacher groups were being included. Superintendent Dr. Rochelle Daniels and other board members confirmed CTTN and NKCEA engagement is planned; Shelton said evaluation measures and proposals will be shaped by synthesis of committee work and survey responses through April.

The district also outlined operational next steps: monthly subcommittee meetings beginning in January, development of career-journey maps and compensation calculators for the staff portal, and proposals for mentorship cohorts and internship pipelines. Shelton said the committee includes 39 stakeholders across elementary, middle, high school and support specialties.

The board commended the work and suggested additional community partnerships, including exploring teacher housing and financial-education supports as potential retention tools. The presentation concluded with the district committing to return with synthesized recommendations and formal proposals to HR in the coming months.

The board took no formal vote on policy at the meeting; the task force's recommendations will come back as proposals for HR review.