Earlier this summer, the Post asked our readers what issues you wanted to hear candidates running for Shawnee Mission Board of Education to address leading up to the Nov. 7 election.
Based on that feedback, we developed a five-item questionnaire centering the issues most important to Shawnee Mission district patrons.
Each day this week, we’ll publish the candidates’ responses to one question.
Today, we’re publishing candidates’ responses to the following question:
Teacher and staff retention has been a concern for years in local schools, a problem exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Districts continue to enter each new year with dozens of vacancies, most notably among special education teachers. Schools are also having trouble filling classified, non-teacher staff roles, like paras and custodians. What, if anything, can the school board do to help schools recruit and retain qualified staff?
Below are the answers the Post received from candidates on this issue:
SM North Area
Mario Garcia III
Recruiting and retaining good teachers is critical to any school district. What specifically is important to SMSD is recruiting and retaining high quality teachers that resemble the student body and school community.
The idea of growing your own is important to me as a candidate and as a product of SMSD. In fact, I think any Shawnee Mission grad who gets their teaching degree should receive an offer to work in the district they grew up in.
I am happy that our compensation package is high, that our educators are receiving mentorship and are experiencing professional development, but I know more can be done to support our teachers and staff. As a board member I can do my part in not making their lives harder. A high functioning board can help with all of this.
Ron Occhiogrosso
Teachers are leaving in numbers that are affecting the quality education that our students deserve. Of course there are many excellent teachers who teach our SMSD students. But there is a retention/attraction-to-teach problem or this question wouldn’t be one of the five in this survey.
My firm belief is the fact that there are specific factors which are affecting teachers leaving their profession. Their joy. I don’t use that word, joy, lightly. I get great joy when I teach science to middle school through to, and including, college students. Teachers are practically leaving in en masse numbers in some places.
One big factor is the DEI(B) initiatives. Many teachers and other staff who do not believe in these initiatives are, frankly, fed up. I know of a first-hand situation that happened in a school district in southwestern Missouri where a Guidance Counselor had to quit because he was being forced to use proper pronouns for those few gender-confused students; he simply would not use the word he when in fact the student was a biological girl, and vice versa.
What in the world has happened to Public-School Education in our Great USA? This is nonsense! And then when teachers are being told to do the same in the classroom, what do you think happens to the quality of the lesson that is supposed to be happening in math, in history, in ELA, in Science, in POE, in vocational classes, and all other classes? Answer: the teaching effectiveness goes down for a vast majority of students in those classes.
SM South Area
Jessica Hembree (incumbent)
In my first term, we improved teacher retention through increased plan time, higher pay and a more collaborative bargaining approach. But big challenges persist.
Attracting and retaining high-quality staff remains an immense challenge exacerbated by the pandemic, educator burnout and current labor trends. As a board member, I will prioritize making SMSD an attractive workplace for teachers and staff through competitive compensation, robust benefits and substantial efforts to improve morale, culture and work conditions. We should collaborate with educators to understand their most pressing needs and give them greater voice in district decisions.
Expanding mentoring and “grow your own” programs, providing stipends for hard-to-staff positions, strengthening professional development and ensuring ample collaboration time all signal that we value teachers as the professionals they are. Funding challenges with the state persist, but local efforts to elevate the teaching profession make a real difference.
Teachers deserve schools where they feel empowered, supported and able to focus on students without unnecessary burdens. They should have the resources and environment needed to thrive. Our most precious district resource is our people. By fostering a positive culture where educators feel heard, appreciated and invested in, I know SMSD can become the workplace of choice for the best teachers. With creative recruitment strategies and intentional retention efforts, we can build a robust pipeline and become the district where talented teachers dedicate their careers to the meaningful work of guiding our students’ success.
Mark Tallent
Did not provide the Post with a response.
SM Northwest Area
Jamie Borgman (incumbent)
This is an issue that school districts and corporations are facing across the country. It is a real problem.
SMSD has several initiatives in place like, “Grow Your Own,” as well as partnerships with local universities which help with recruitment. I think the SMSD school board can specifically help by having a healthy board of education that is supportive of teachers and classified staff and allocates money directly to classrooms.
The board can also do its best to pay teachers and staff fair and livable wages. I support SMSD’s Human Resources team and all of the efforts it is doing to recruit and retain staff within the parameters it has to work with.
Lynn McLarty
The school board should be instrumental in determining what factors are responsible for the deficiencies in staff and in developing strategies to address the deficiencies. Salaries and benefits must be competitive. Efforts must be made to identify where funds are over-committed or spent unwisely, which can be used to increase salaries and/or benefits to make SMSD more competitive in the hiring and retention processes. If elected to the board, I will seek to understand why, when there was a decrease in teachers and a decrease in students, there was an increase in staffing to the tune of plus-32 FTE certified staff, plus-3.0 administrative staff and plus-25.5 FTE classified staff.
In 2022, the per-pupil funding from taxpayers was $14,634 per student, and that increased in 2023. The national average as of May 18, 2023, was $14,347. Many successful private schools operate on a budget far less than the national average. The amount of money committed to public schools does not appear to be the problem.
The pandemic continues to be a crutch to excuse poor academic performance and it is a crutch to explain departures from the district and the inability to attract employees. The pandemic is in the past, and we need to deal with current realities and develop solutions to attract new hires and retain current employees.
There are so many reasons given for teachers quitting, such as teacher burnout, low pay, unrealistic expectations, ever-changing initiatives, limited opportunity for growth, lack of support, lack of transparency and policies. And many of these reasons can be responsible for the inability of the district to appear to be an attractive employer.
Pay has increased in many sectors of our economy, while the school district has not kept pace. Non-teachers are likely to be more motivated by higher pay and less by a commitment to their profession than teachers. The board must identify cause and effect for each group of employees and develop solutions.
At-Large Area
David Westbrook
We should, indeed, pay our teachers more. It’s because we know the work they do will truly influence generations of people we will never meet. In this respect, a good teacher leaves a legacy that lasts longer than a lifetime.
But if a good teacher never gets rich, it’s absolutely imperative that no teacher ever becomes poor because of a calamity of health. That’s why as a school board member, I will favor fringe benefits for our teachers that inspire good health habits while at the same time protecting those teachers from even a mild health issue causing them to suffer an economic calamity.
There is no profession in our community that deserves more respect than that of a classroom teacher. Our teachers should not be attracted to go to work as a teacher elsewhere because they can get more pay there or because they believe they gain more respect there. Our community enjoys a great reputation because our schools are high quality. Our students achieve because our teachers perform. That is a standard to which our school board should always be devoted.
Logan Austin
Did not provide the Post with a response.
Tomorrow, we will publish candidates’ responses to the next question:
By some metrics, including national standardized tests like NAEP, Kansas schools’ academic performance has declined in the wake of COVID-19, and student achievement has yet to fully return to pre-pandemic levels, especially in math. At the same time, Shawnee Mission remains one of the highest achieving school districts in Kansas when it comes to state-level assessments and graduation rates. How do you assess Shawnee Mission’s current level of achievement? What, if anything, are you most concerned about?
