IMAGE: Courtesy Green Bay Area Public School District.
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — We are two weeks away from the start of the 2023-2024 school year and districts across our area are still looking to fill open positions.
A quick check around Northeast Wisconsin reveals the Appleton Area School District is still looking to fill about 20 jobs. And Green Bay is looking to fill roughly 30 classroom positions.
In an effort to fill its positions, the Green Bay Area Public School district is getting creative to deal with staffing shortages.
At last check on the WECAN, Wisconsin Education Career Access Network website, the Green Bay Area Public School District is still looking to fill more than 50 positions, districtwide, with nearly three dozen of them in classrooms. That number was more than a 170 at the beginning of the month.
And while the district has made significant progress in hiring, it’s still looking to fill dozens of positions.
According to the district, seven of those more than 50 openings are special education jobs, positions the district was hoping current teachers would volunteer to take.
In an email sent to school district staff last Friday, administrators in Green Bay said the district is implementing an Educator Transfer Stipend Program, or bonus program, to address those special education openings.
According to the email, educators, who volunteer and are accepted into the program, will be paid $2,000 at the beginning of the school year and an additional $2,000 at the start of the second semester, for service in the program, if they still have that role.
The email went on to say the voluntary program was being implemented first before the district activated its involuntary transfer language outlined in the employee handbook.
The deadline to volunteer for the program was 8 a.m. Monday.
In a subsequent email, the district’s Director of Communications and Public Relations said the district can involuntarily transfer teachers at a certain point in the summer to address late enrollment surges, class size issues, etc., moves like these are not unusual and happen yearly.
Brent Bergstrom, president of the Green Bay Education Association echoed those sentiments. He said, “When it comes down to it, we’re all in it for the kids. We’re all in it to try and help make the district a really positive place to be. It’s not an ideal situation. Involuntary transfers happen in every profession and they can legally happen in every profession.”
And Bergstrom says the pay incentive is a step in the right direction to hopefully motivate an educator to make the move, because of how disruptive such change can be right before school is set to start.
He added, “It’s a complete mind shift right, especially if it’s a completely different role, different building, different staff. It’s changing everything you know and starting over. So, it’s almost like starting an entirely new job.”
With only two weeks to go before school buildings are full again, the district says it will continue to implement strategies to ensure all open positions are filled in a time of worker shortages.
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