Summertime may be in full swing, but the Great Falls Public School District is hard at work getting ready for the upcoming academic year.
Like any major organization, the district sees its share of turnover at the end of each year.
It makes the need for robust recruiting efforts all the more important, not just for teachers, but also qualified support staff.
“I think education has its ebbs and flows of cycles in regards to people that want to become teachers one way or the other,” said Lance Boyd, GFPS Executive Director of Student Achievement. “I think right now we're in a down cycle.”
As of Monday, Boyd said the Great Falls Public School District has about half a dozen elementary teaching positions open, six to eight special ed teacher openings, and several content specific secondary education positions. Boyd says those umbers are typical for this time of year.
Great Falls isn’t the only district in need of teachers and other personnel. Boyd says when it comes to attracting them, housing is the biggest challenge.
“For us right now, our biggest our biggest thing that we're we struggle with is trying to find affordable housing for staff coming in, whether that's a speech pathologist or a first year teacher trying to find something that a single person could move into, or a small family or a large family is just a struggle at times,” said Boyd.
The district also needs 30 to 40 teacher aides, 25 to 35 para-educators, and a number of other support staff.
They hope to fill some of those numbers August 21st during a job fair from 11:00 a.m to 1:00 p.m. at Paris Gibson Education Center.
“That is really an opportunity for people that are looking for a support role in our schools, whether that's a custodian, a food service worker, a parent educator, a teacher's aide on overload, teacher, aide to come and put their application in and get interviewed that same day and be offered a position where they best possibly fit inside of our district,” said Boyd.
For the past few years, GFPS has held a “High Voltage” weekend to recruit potential teachers.
The efforts are just a couple ways the district stays proactive.
“We'll bring in an interview anywhere from 30 to 40 prospective teachers and that helps on the teaching side of it immensely to be able to fill in openings we know we have up front,” said Boyd. “And our team is constantly looking at ways to recruit from the outside, whether that's in other communities in Montana or outside of Montana to recruit in our job fairs. We are very productive when it comes to recruiting all of our support staff.”
One area where the district is fully staffed is at the new CORE School at Morningside Elementary, featuring an immersive teacher preparation program in partnership with UM Western and Great Falls College.
“I think any time you look at having workforce shortages, it's your job and responsibility to get innovative and look at other ways to recruit into the field,” said Boyd. “The CORE school at Morningside is one of those ways to be able to do that. We're fully staffed with our teaching staff.”
The first day of school is August 28th. Staff reports August 26th. School buildings open up for registration on August 14th.
For a link to all the current job openings in the Great Falls Public School District, click here.
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