Regional superintendents meet to solve teacher shortage

During a monthly meeting Thursday with regional superintendents, the executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association talked about a new policy that will open Montana borders and make it easier for qualified out-of-state teachers to fill some much-needed gaps.

"The short version of the rule change is: If you work for five years under a regular license from another state and can come with a good recommendation from a previous employer, you can get licensed in the state of Montana," Dennis Parman of MREA said.

Parman, who had worked as superintendent of Havre Public Schools and then as deputy superintendent of public instruction before taking over at MREA , said he had to deny many qualified teachers because they didn't meet Montana's strict licensing requirements.

"I worked for OPI for seven years and I believed we had an invisible wall around our state when it came to experienced teachers being able to come into Montana and get a license, and potentially getting a job," he said.

Julia Cruse from the OPI said the rule's intention was to give people who were training as teachers in Montana an edge.

But effective the first day of 2017, that wall will come down, Parman said.

The superintendents, who meet monthly in the Montana State University-Northern Fireside Room, unanimously agreed the teacher shortage problem has reached crisis levels.

"This recruitment thing is beyond belief. It's not a matter of sorting through applications, it's hoping you get one." Big Sandy Schools Superintendent Brad Moore said. "We're cannibalizing one another to try and find teachers."

And although their focus is the Hi-Line and surrounding region, they said it's not a problem exclusive to the area, the state or even the country.

"This teacher shortage is a microcosm of what's going on around the nation. There's not enough anywhere," PayneWest Insurance School Pool Loss Control Specialist Al Sipes said.

Location, location, location, the supers emphasized.

Superintendent of Rocky Boy Public Schools Voyd St. Pierre said the regional bareness can be an unpleasant shock and deterrent to outsiders.

"When we go out to recruit teachers for our small rural schools, we get those people who want to see the West before it's gone. Then they come and out and start searching and figure out that the West isn't what they thought it was. ...  I've had prospective employees come through - 'Oh, we drove the area last night. Gee, it's too rural, my wife doesn't want to live here' - they didn't even bother showing up for the scheduled interview the next day," St. Pierre said.

Box Elder School Superintendent Tom Peck said he's had teachers who liked the school, the staff, the students, the pay wasn't a factor, housing was affordable - yet it still wasn't enough.

"It's because of where we were. None of them had ties to the area," Peck said. "So when they got the opportunity to go home, they left, and we can't control that."

The supers said it's important to hire teachers who have ties to the area. And that's why they are working with Northern. The university is bringing back its secondary education programs, which will hopefully start putting regional teachers back in the pipeline, they said.

"If they're going to school here, than they wanna work here and start a family here," Peck said.

The supers discussed how the teaching profession has changed.

"It's the amount of roles that schools are asked to take on," North Star School District Superintendent Bart Hawkins said. "We've gone from feeding students lunch to feeding students breakfast to providing, in some cases, health care, or at least being cognizant of their health care, to being asked to make their emotional well-being is taken care of. ... The amount of roles society has asked the schools to play has changed. It has increased."

Havre Public Schools Superintendent Andy Carlson said educators were once looked at differently - "I just think that the profession in general isn't as well-respected."

"The perception, or the attitude toward the teaching profession, has changed within the last 25 years - totally for the worst," Peck said. "People think teachers just hang out with kids and you get two months off in the summer - 'How can that be so hard?'"

Sipes said teaching has been politicized.

"It takes good politics to try to say, 'We're spending all this money and look at the result,'" he said.

They agreed that there is no correlation between perception and qualifications.

"Not only are our teachers as good as they once were," Hawkins said, "they're better. They are more highly-trained. We are asking them to do more, and they are accomplishing that, even in spite of the perception change that our teachers have gone through."

Although they acknowledged that they compete with each other for the same available workers, the supers gather with the hope that everybody comes away with something that'll benefit their district.

Peck said Box Elder schools is running a day care for students and staff.

"We've given students who have babies priorities. We didn't want to give kids any excuse not to graduate," he said, adding that day care is free for students. Employees pay $18 a day. We believe that might be that tilting point to not only recruit teachers to Box Elder, but to keep them there."

St. Pierre said the Rocky Boy school district is trying what they can to grow their own educators.

"We're giving opportunities to teachers, para professionals and others to become administrators," he said, adding that the district is encouraging teachers who may not be endorsed in a needed area by paying for their education or their internships.

Parman said helping teachers who come out of school buried in student loans is being discussed.

Peck had mentioned earlier that the average debt teachers get out of college with is between $30,000 to $40,000, which can be a problem when making about $25,000 a year.

"There is a bill draft that came out of the school funding commission to assist with loan repayment and it has a focus on rural Montana," Parman said. "I think it has a great concept to it - it actually increments up. I think it starts at $2,000 the first year, and if you stay in that district, it's $3,000, goes up to $5,000 to assist with loan repayment."

Regional focus, loan repayment, free training, affordable housing, secondary education - there is no single, clear-cut answer, everyone agreed.

"Seems like a daunting task. What is the answer? I don't know," Superintendent of Chester-Joplin-Inverness Schools Francis LaBounty said. "There's no easy answer, that's for sure. You can't make people come work for you."

"We have a problem, but also people that are wanting to fix it," Hawkins said, adding that's the reason they come together.

Peck said the health profession was at a critical place as well. But they worked to change the public perception so people would understand that it was a noble profession, and they let people know there was a shortage and therefore a great opportunity, he said.

"Now you have developed that pipeline in colleges for nursing," Peck said.

That's what he's hoping happens with the teaching profession - "We haven't gotten there with teaching," he said.

"Some of the greatest people in society are educators," he added.