As part of this, during a special meeting held Monday night, the school board voted 3-1, with Luche Giacomino dissenting, to approve a teacher recruitment bonus for hard-to-fill teaching positions.
The bonus will be a $500-per-month housing subsidy for teachers who live in Bisbee, said Superintendent Gail Covington McBride. It will last for one year.
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“This might give them a leg up,” Covington McBride said of potential new teachers who might be interested in making the move to Bisbee for a new job, but are possibly deterred by “the economy the way it is, and the housing situation and the challenges of moving.”
Hard-to-fill positions, for school districts in general, include math, science and special education, the superintendent said.
“But then there can be a position that’s hard to fill because it’s a specialty area,” Covington McBride said. “(Such as) band, there may not be a lot of band teachers.
“English language development teachers are hard-to-fill positions.”
On a district level, Covington McBride said their sixth-grade teacher positions would be considered hard-to-fill because “they were open last spring and we weren’t able to fill them.”
As far as being available to afford to provide the bonuses, Covington McBride said “there is money available in some of our title money that is set aside for specifically recruiting highly-qualified teachers.”
In addition to that, she said money will be used from the maintenance and operation budget.
By doing the bonus on a month-to-month basis though, versus giving a teacher a signing bonus, Covington McBride said the district won’t be in a position to lose money.
“They receive the subsidy once a month, so if the teacher decided this wasn’t for them and broke the contract, the district wouldn’t be in the position of trying to get it back,” she said. “When you give a signing bonus, if the person leaves, you are really left with very little recourse to get it back.”
Covington McBride said she has plans at a future board meeting to bring the current teacher salary schedule forward for review.
With other rural school districts having trouble filling positions, Covington McBride felt it was important to find incentives to bring teachers to Bisbee.
“The data that we were just looking at … between Douglas and Tombstone there were 47 positions that had to be filled this year,” she said. “If you take our seven and the 47 together, there were over 50 positions that had to be filled.
“So we’re in a very competitive arena bringing teachers to our rural schools.”
Giacomino said in a phone interview Tuesday that she voted against the proposal because she felt it was unfair to teachers who have been in the district for years.
“Starting teacher’s salary is around $27,000,” she explained. “OK, you give them $500 for the first year, that’s $6,000.”
She said that would mean, while “we have people who have been around for years who are making $27,000,” new teachers coming in would essentially be making about $33,000.
“We need to recruit teachers, yes, but we’ve got good, qualified teachers over there now who wouldn’t be making that much money,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s fair to them, I think they should be making that $500 before new teachers do.”
In other recruiting efforts, Covington McBride said some administrators will go to Madison, Wis., for a teacher recruiting fair — the only winter recruiting fair. To help make the area more appealing, the superintendent said the district has been working with some local real estate agents to develop materials to give potential recruits an idea of the rental and housing market in the area, as well as general information about Bisbee.
“We really want at this recruiting fair to let teachers know where Bisbee is,” Covington McBride said. “We’re really trying to get people to know that this is a great place to live and work.”
Herald/Review reporter Katie Evans can be reached at 515-4611 or by e-mail at katie.evans@svherald.com.
