Tuesday marked the start of a new school year for local school districts, with a crop of new teachers entering the classrooms. The Oconto Fall School District, which experienced a 10 percent teacher turnover rate from last year, has placed extra emphasis on finding and retaining teachers.
The district changed to an online recruiting system to find interested candidates and will invest more in personnel for the next three years, after voters approved additional funding in an August referendum. The School Board also increased the starting wage to $33,370, up from $31,654, for a first-year teacher.
The Gillett School District will also pay new teachers more than it did a year ago. The Gillett School Board approved a 1.46 percent increase in base wage for all staff, bringing the starting wage for an inexperienced teacher to $32,500.
While hiring teachers isn’t always difficult, keeping good ones can be. Rural school districts often provide new teachers with their initial experience, then lose them to larger school districts that pay higher wages.
“Districts go through a lot in training new educators,” Gillett Superintendent Todd Carlson said. “It is probably into the second or third year when many educators really hit their stride as effective educators. You often see the larger district trying to attract these two-, three- or four-year seasoned teachers.”
“Almost always they will see a significant pay increase if the individual is a good teacher, especially in those areas where there is a limited pool of candidates,” Oconto Falls Superintendent Dave Polashek said.
Increase in competition
Case in point: Kaleb Santy, a Pulaski native and one of two departing Oconto Falls High School agriscience teachers. He will teach in Pulaski for the 2014-15 school year. He also applied at Bay Port High School.
“All three (school districts) worked really hard to get me there,” he said.
According to Santy, Bay Port said it would match anything Pulaski offered. Oconto Falls offered a $10,000 increase, “which was extremely tempting,” Santy said.
The decision breaker? A $22,000 increase in wages.
“That made it tough,” Santy said. “I still miss Oconto Falls. As an ag teacher you invest a lot in the community, with things like FFA. It’s hard to walk away from everything that was built in Oconto Falls.”
Pulaski, he said, has a more progressive pay system.
Polashek said while Act 10 allows districts to be more flexible in offering compensation, Oconto Falls hasn’t had the funding to do so. In the past two years, several teachers considered moving to another district and asked for counter offers, he said.
“In a very few cases we did make adjustments,” he said, although doing so opened the door for others to make similar requests the district couldn’t meet. Some teachers stayed, some left.
The passage of an Aug. 12 referendum will provide $50,000 more in each of the next three school years for the attraction and retention of teachers.
Polashek said certain positions are harder to fill, such as special education, tech ed, agriculture and foreign languages. He said these positions have lower numbers of candidates because there is less interest in them. Oconto Falls lost two agricultural teachers this year and had only six applicants.
“One of the other critical short areas is school psychologist,” Polashek said.
Last year the district employed two full-time psychologists. One employee left the district due to a spouse’s employment, and the other was promoted to a different position.
“We worked very hard to refill both positions,” he said. “We were successful in finding one person at 60 percent time.”
One candidate had two other offers and opted for a position that paid about $20,000 more than Oconto Falls could offer, Polashek said.
It’s not all about pay
Because of limits in funding, the Oconto Falls and Gillett school districts are striving to make conditions attractive to keep staff.
“Gillett is trying hard to make the Gillett School District the place you want to be,” Carlson said.
The district works to create a positive school climate and promotes “a collaborative understanding that we are all in this together,” he said.
Carlson encourages the staff to appreciate life in a small city such as Gillett and the opportunities for recreation and outdoor activities.
“Our job is to make sure we have a high quality education system that is able to attract families that are interested in the less hectic lifestyle and not sharing a backyard with six other neighbors,” he said.
Polashek agreed factors besides compensation are important to retain teachers.
“How people are treated as professionals can make a difference. We pride ourselves on recognizing the good work that our teachers are doing,” he said. “We value input and show that we care about our teachers. We support them with high quality training and encourage personal growth.”
Reputation matters
Rachel Kroeplien, a new ag teacher at Oconto Falls High School, said she was attracted to the position because of the agricultural department’s reputation.
“I knew it was a good program,” she said. “I always heard about Oconto Falls through FFA at conferences and conventions. They always stuck out.”
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in December, Kroeplien taught short-term at Milton High School in the Janesville area before looking for a job.
“It wasn’t a money thing,” she said. “It was the program and the quality of the program.”
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