{"id":109006,"date":"2015-10-08T20:05:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T02:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/states-schools-expand-search-for-teachers\/"},"modified":"2015-10-08T20:05:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T02:05:21","slug":"states-schools-expand-search-for-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/states-schools-expand-search-for-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"State\u2019s schools expand search for teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Protesters
Protesters opposed to the Jefferson County School Board majority march through Golden on Oct. 2, 2014. Some Colorado school districts are offering incentives that include forgiveness for student loans and help with housing.<\/span>Nathaniel Minor\/Colorado Public Radio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 About 1,000 freshly minted teachers graduated in Colorado last year with credentials in elementary education.<\/p>\n

Genoa-Hugo Elementary school, an hour east of Denver, only needed one of them. But, \u201cthey had zero applications last year,\u201d said Robert Mitchell, Academic Policy Officer for Educator Preparation with the Colorado Department of Higher Education. \u201cThat is somewhat telling.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says some Colorado rural school districts are on the brink of crisis. And even Front Range struggle to fill positions.<\/p>\n

Mitchell says Colorado is just not producing enough teachers. This year, enrollments in the state\u2019s teacher prep schools are down 23 percent compared with five years ago.<\/p>\n

Math, science and special-ed teachers are especially coveted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fought over a math teacher a couple of years ago with Greeley, and we won,\u201d said Amy Spruce, recruitment and retention administrator with the Adams 12 Five Star Schools district, northwest of Denver. It includes Westminster and Thornton.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheer number of teachers that we need aren\u2019t available so we\u2019ve started going out of state to recruit where there\u2019s a surplus of teachers like Michigan or Utah where they\u2019re just churning out more teachers than they can hire, trying to convince them to come to Colorado,\u201d Spruce said.<\/p>\n

Pueblo, a district struggling academically, has brought teachers in out of retirement.<\/p>\n

Jack Kronser, interim human resources chief in the Adams 14 district north of Denver that includes Commerce City, has spent 23 years recruiting for schools. He says finding teachers with the right skills is more challenging now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily have the right pool of teachers here so we will go out of state to find those math teachers, those speech language therapists, the minority teachers,\u201d he said. \u201cWith a smaller pool of candidates, there are fewer high-quality teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why the shortage?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last five to six years, we\u2019ve had several mandates that were truly unfunded, went through a recession, put more on people\u2019s plates and didn\u2019t take anything off,\u201d said Don Anderson, director of the East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which provides services to local member school districts.<\/p>\n

Principals and other school officials say that Jefferson County has lost hundreds of teachers because of political turmoil over curriculum.<\/p>\n

In several metro Denver middle and high schools at the start of this year, there were still job postings for math and science teachers. That means a last-minute need for qualified substitutes, classes divided among other teachers, and instructional coaches brought in to help teachers handle the changes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rough in the country<\/p>\n

Rural Colorado also has some big hurdles.<\/p>\n

Starting pay in many rural districts is around $30,000, or even less than $25,000 in a few. School officials say they can\u2019t compete with Front Range districts. And some northern Colorado districts can\u2019t compete with Wyoming, which pays up to $20,000 more.<\/p>\n

When there isn\u2019t a pool of candidates, rural districts often take what they can get. If a candidate just has a general bachelor\u2019s degree, he or she can take licensure classes and get an emergency authorization that\u2019s good for a year.<\/p>\n

They also focus on incentives \u2013 forgiving student loans, paying for continuing education, or offsetting housing costs.<\/p>\n

Garfield County\u2019s School District 16 east of Grand Junction will pay for a master\u2019s degree if a new teacher commits to five years. In the eastern plains, recruiters will pay $4,000 for a two-year commitment to encourage speech therapists and others to get the master\u2019s degree they need to administer and analyze tests, .<\/p>\n

At the department of higher education, Mitchell tries to stay optimistic.<\/p>\n

But he, like Adam\u2019s Five Star\u2019s Spruce, thinks the shortage will be problem for a while. Spruce says that will persist until perceptions are changed about the teaching profession:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf everybody realized what they (teachers) had to do, they should be really elevated to that professional dignity of a doctor or someone like that,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re really shaping the future for our state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cash-strapped rural districts focus on incentives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109006"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}