How these 3 leaders approach creative staffing

Filling teacher vacancies continues to be a challenge for school districts nationwide. District Administration spoke with three superintendents who are using creative staffing strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers.

Kenny Rodrequez, Grandview C-4 School District, Missouri

For the last three years, recruitment and retention via creative staffing has been a key focus for Superintendent Rodrequez. Some 80% of his students identify as of color, and they need to feel represented by their educators. Rodrequez has built a recruitment team tasked with attracting top talent from HBCUs and other diverse colleges and universities.

“We focused on getting together as a group and looking at all of our recruitment materials,” he says. “We completely redid them. We looked at our website and tried to redo different pieces of our website, but we had to look at them through the lens of a new employee who we were trying to recruit.”

The district has also implemented a paraprofessional support program that provides a faster pathway to teacher certification. Additionally, the district is producing teachers through its students.

“Going back to our high school and our career pathways, we had more students graduate this year that are going into the teaching profession than we’ve had in the last five years,” says Rodrequez. “That’s a deliberate effort of us saying, ‘This is an amazing profession’ and supporting them.”

Wendy Birhanzel, Harrison School District 2, Colorado

“You see an educator shortage across the nation; we can’t just be upset about that,” says Superintendent Birhanzel. “We have to do something different.” She says creative staffing tops her list of priorities, citing research that underscores the correlation between quality teachers and student success.

As a result, she and her team are “willing to take the risk” by experimenting with innovative approaches to staffing, including hiring international teachers to fill math, science and special education positions. Birhanzel says U.S. colleges and universities aren’t churning out teachers like they used to.

“You can’t find them,” she says. “I’ve gotten feedback like, ‘Why can’t you just hire American,’ and I say, ‘Find me one and I will.’ But the education colleges are not graduating educators.”

The initiative has succeeded thus far.

“It’s been really great because these international teachers, they benefit from coming to the U.S. and learning our culture and being in our system, and we benefit from them bringing their culture,” she explains.

The district’s apprenticeship program pairs paraprofessionals and other staff members with licensed teachers. These apprentices can take over their mentor’s class and get paid more than a traditional education support professional.

The district then steers the paraprofessional through alternative licensing pathways to get certified. It’s a belief that if they believe in our kids, we can help them learn how to teach, even if it’s not the traditional four-year college way.”

The district also provides affordable housing opportunities for new teachers, a program Birhanzel calls “Wendy’s Village.” It consists of 40 tiny homes located on school-owned land, where each one-bedroom unit costs about $850 a month fully furnished.

“We’re working with a nonprofit that is doing all the fundraising, and teachers will be able to move in for three years while they save their money until they’re able to afford their own place,” she says. “It gives them dignity and the ability to be a teacher in our district.”

Sean Bulson, Harford County Public Schools, Maryland

Harford Couty Public Schools grows its own teachers through its Teacher Academy of Maryland, an early college CTE pathway, which currently has about 50 participants.

Through a partnership with the local community college, students can complete two years of their teaching degree while they’re still in high school.

Bulson says there’s an advantage to hiring students who are “homegrown.”

“If I’m recruiting students who grew up here and already have a commitment to the community, I feel it’ll lead to long-term retention,” he says.

Harford County helps non-teaching employees earn certifications through cohort programs operated with its local community college and Towson University’s satellite campus.

The initiative produces educators in a variety of fields, including special education, which continues to be a recruiting challenge.

“It’s been a good model for us,” he says. “With our first cohort, we were able to find a way to actually deliver this at no cost to our staff.”