Orange Country district looks to teacher incentives, Grow Your Own program to attract quality faculty
High stress and low pay have contributed to a teacher shortage in Indiana. At the beginning of August more than 1,000 teaching openings remained across the state.
With more school corporations struggling to find and keep enough teachers, one southern Indiana school district is increasing its efforts to attract teachers.
Paoli Community School Corporation received a grant of $105,803 from the Indiana Department of Education to attract and retain teachers.
The IDOE announced Oct. 3 it awarded nearly $11 million in grants to more than a dozen school districts and higher learning institutions.
The Attract, Prepare, Retain Grant program aims to support local initiatives throughout the state.
Sherry Wise, assistant superintendent of Paoli Community School Corporation, said the district will partner with Equitable Education Solutions at Indiana State University and take a multi-pronged approach.
“Equitable Education Solutions will help us with a social media campaign to showcase our amazing teachers here to attract more teachers to the area,” she said.
Through the partnership with ISU, Paoli also will offer its teachers the chance to get their master’s degree and become credentialed in dual credit classes, which will benefit students.
Paoli also plans to start a Grow Your Own program that will work with high school students interested in becoming teachers.
“As a rural district, we want to work with our high school students so when they do get their degree, they will return to the area and teach for us,” Wise said.
Wise is a native of Paoli and has spent her career in education. She worked in human resources for a Florida school system for a while and teacher recruitment was part of her job. The IDOE grant will allow Paoli schools to adapt some of the programs she saw working in Florida to Paoli.
“Our goal is to improve the quality of our instructors and bring our kids who want to teach, back to Paoli,” she said.
The average teacher salary for Indiana teachers was roughly $53,000 during the 2020-21 school year, which lags behind neighboring states, according to data from the National Education Association.
In Illinois, the average teacher salary is about $71,000. Teachers earn about $64,000 per year on average in Michigan, and $54,000 in Kentucky.
Wise said Paoli, which has 95 teachers on its faculty, was fortunate to fill all its vacancies by the start of the 2022-23 school year. But it is getting more difficult, especially so with math and science positions.
With fewer students graduating college with education degrees, the problem becomes more serious as veteran teachers retire or leave the profession.
When teachers come to Paoli, Wise said, it’s because of the quality of education.
“Our strong selling point is the educational opportunities our students have. Often teachers have children of their own and to have their children here is appealing,” she said.
Throop Elementary has a solid reputation, she said, and the high school has programs that let students earn college credits and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), for students who will be first-generation college students.
The original grant amount for the program was $5 million, but IDOE expanded it to $10.6 million because of “an overwhelming number of strong applications.”
“The recipients of this grant understand the challenges of today’s labor market and know that schools and community partners must work together to find creative methods for recruiting and retaining Indiana’s very best educators,” Indiana Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner said in a press release. “Whether through the expansion of registered apprenticeships, Grow Your Own programs, or partnerships with local and national higher education providers, the innovative solutions funded by this grant will provide important support for Indiana educators and students.”
The IDOE says the recipients’ applications focused on increasing leadership and career advancement among existing teachers in addition to increasing opportunities for high school students and underrepresented populations to pursue teaching careers.