MILTON — Santa Rosa County School District officials want to prevent having a shortage of instructors by changing their approach toward teacher recruitment.
Elected school board officials have taken their first step in the process by approving a committee that would explore options for improving teacher recruitment.
“Santa Rosa County has always been blessed in that we have had more quality applicants than we had positions,” said Conni Carnley, assistant superintendent for Human Resources. “But we are now starting to feel that crunch that the rest of the state, and honestly a lot of places in the country, are feeling in the lack of qualified, experienced or even new teachers.”
Carnley and Superintendent Tim Wyrosdick said there are several reasons for seeing a drop in teacher applicants.
Carnley said the school district is witnessing a higher turnover rate with younger teachers who are new to the profession and single.
“They are more mobile; they are moving more frequently,” as opposed to more experienced teachers who often settle down in the community with a family to support, she said.
Teachers who are married to military spouses are also not likely to stay in one area due to regular relocating every couple of years.
Another component to the decrease in teachers stems from changes in retirement options, Wyrosdick said. One example is with the state’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan, Wyrosdick said.
“When you do (DROP), your salary that you would receive as a retiree then goes into a fund and it earned at one point in time almost 6 percent,” he said. “When the recession hit, they bumped that down to 1.3 percent.”
Wyrosdick said many educators throughout Florida opted to go into DROP, which led to an increase in retired educators over the next several years.
In addition, Santa Rosa County continues to deal with an increasing student population.
“We are probably between 350 and 400 new students over from what we had from last year,” Wyrosdick said.
Carnley and Wyrosdick said the school district is not facing a large vacancy of educators at this time.
Currently, the school district seeks instructors who specialize in science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum ─ particularly in science and mathematics.
Carnley said the district also seeks instructors certified in exceptional student education.
With the new committee in the works, Carnley already has several ideas that could bring more applicants to the county.
“We are looking to reach out to (teachers) in a three-hour or more radius going over to Alabama, Mississippi (and) Georgia,” she said.
For example, the district would contact more colleges, and send recruitment packages to schools aimed at graduates looking to enter the education field.
Carnley anticipates the committee, which will include School Board member Carol Boston, could also explore what other school districts are doing in teacher recruitment, along with scheduling teacher recruitment workshops.
The new recruitment committee’s overall goal is to avoid having a large number of teacher vacancies in Santa Rosa County, Carnley said.
“We do not want to get to that point where we are not having good quality teachers in our classrooms, because that is what our students deserve,” she said at the meeting.
Wyrosdick agreed, adding other school districts are looking beyond county lines to attract more teachers. Wyrosdick said the teaching shortage could lead to a competitive process between school districts.
“We got to get into that competition; the bottom line is just basically that,” Wyrosdick said. “We got to do the due diligence to make sure we are proactive.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: School district expands search for educators (VIDEO)