By Noelle Kronberg
Eagle Times Correspondent
WINDSOR, VT — Faced with state, regional and national staff and teacher shortages, officials with the Windsor (VT) Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) are looking to ensure they support and train staff in an effor to keep their personnel needs as stable as possible.
Superintendent Christine Bourne said that the district is in better shape than last year, but she does not foresee the trend in teacher shortages coming to an end soon.
WSESU serves the towns of Windsor, Weathersfield, Hartland and Brownsville.
Bourne said the district currently has had to increase some class sizes, eliminate elective courses and have teachers expand what courses they are teaching to maintain its course offerings.
Additionally, they have contracted with an agency to provide students requiring speech services with a remote language pathologist.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s what we can do,” she said. “The challenge is that we then need staff to monitor those students while they are receiving that service.”
The district has also employed about a dozen teachers under provisional and emergency licensure in the past year. Vermont allows districts to hire people with baccalaureate (four year) degrees to teach with these special licenses.
The emergency license is good for one year and is restricted by which teaching positions it can be used for. A provisional license is good for two years and the applicant must follow a plan, usually including coursework, to earn their regular licensure by the end of the two years.
Bourne noted that the state has been helpful in the process of employing provisional and emergency license and it has made a big difference in filling positions and benefitting students.
In order to attract applicants, Bourne said the district has tried to be more competitive with the pay scale, including raising salaries for support staff. They have expanded funding for support staff to continue their educations and teachers have a professional development budget that allows them to take courses at the value of six University of Vermont credits.
Throughout the spring and summer, Bourne and her administrative and human resources team further developed their onboarding program.
“We want staff to feel supported and welcome so they’ll stay,” she said.
The development included strengthening the district’s mentoring program, she said.
“Teaching is very stressful and having a good mentor will help make sure they know it’s okay to be stressed and we’re here to support them through that,” Bourne said.
The biggest project for employment and retention the district is working on is a ‘grow your own’ program, headed by the human resources department. With this program, the district is looking to build their teaching capacity and staff from within.
Support and funding will be provided for support staff, such as paraprofessionals, to earn their degrees and/or licensure and then move into teaching positions. The program is not finalized, but should be by the end of the school year.
Bourne said the program will take flexibility from the district, but that has been a common practice for them during the past few years. They have allowed support staff who can only work part-time hours to do so, or others who need to start late or leave early to do so, as well. Some bus drivers in the district double as paraprofessionals, so they are limited in the hours they can be in the classroom.
Bourne said one of the greatest challenges in finding employees is affordable housing and childcare.
“We’ve offered contracts to people from out-of-state who couldn’t find housing in time, so they couldn’t fulfill their contract,” she said.
Schools in WSESU started school on Wednesday, Sept. 6, and the district still has two health teacher and two Spanish teacher positions open, as well as several paraprofessional openings.
The apply, please contact the school district.
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