Eagle County School District is making ‘incremental gains’ on staffing

Eagle County School District has continued to seek solutions to its staffing vacancies — asking for voters to approve alternative funding sources, advocating for better statewide funding, hiring candidates from abroad and creating employee housing opportunities.

And as the district closes out the first semester of the 2023-24 school year, while the challenges persist, it is in a better place than at the start of the year.

“Staffing continues to be our biggest challenge but we have been making gains in that area and are optimistic we will continue to be able to do so moving forward,” said Matt Miano, the district’s chief communications officer.

At the start of the semester, the district reported that it had 41 licensed positions (which includes teacher positions) and 53 support staff openings. As the semester closes, it has 18 certified and 50 non-certified vacancies remaining, according to Adele Wilson, the district’s chief human resources officer.

Not only is this an improvement from the start of the semester, but the start of 2023 as well. In January, the district reported it had 94 unfilled positions. At the start of the previous 2022-23 school year, it had around 75 vacancies.

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As the district works to fill these positions, it has experienced a shift in applicants from domestic to higher levels of international applicants. The school district started the school year with 59 teachers from other countries, 17 of whom were new hires this year. For comparison, the district hired 86 new staff members (44 of whom were teachers) from within the United States.

While this has provided somewhat of a reprieve to its vacancies, it is not a perfect situation due to the temporary nature of these teachers’ visas. The initial J-1 visa for teachers is three years and can be extended for an additional two years. Superintendent Philip Qualman has been working with state legislators for reviews of these visas to make their stays more permanent and flexible in the type of work they can do.

This advocacy is relatively recent and has yet to yield definitive progress.

“Nothing has changed at the federal level to this point,” Wilson said.

Among the remaining vacancies, the district’s transportation and early childhood education departments “continue to have the greatest needs,” Wilson said.

In December, the district currently has 18 vacancies in its transportation department and four in its early childhood department.

“We reallocate resources as needed to ensure that all of our services are met. Shifting staff around and updating bus routes have allowed for us to maintain necessary services,” Wilson said.

While the early childhood department continues to be impacted, the situation has much improved. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, the district was missing around 19 para-educators in the department. By adding staff, the district has been able to open up classrooms that had been closed previously. This year, only two of the district’s early childhood classrooms are closed, compared to five the previous year.  

Seeking solutions

“Certainly the cost of living and lack of affordable housing continue to be at the forefront of the shortages and the broken state funding model does not give us much leeway to tackle all these issues as much as we would like so we are left making incremental gains as able,” Wilson said.

This November, the district asked voters to approve two alternative funding mechanisms — a mill levy and a bond — to address many of these challenges on a local level. Eagle County voters rejected the mill levy but approved the bond.

The district has finalized the required documents and is preparing to sell the bonds in January. 

The $100 million bond will allow the district to improve its current facilities, move forward with an early learning center in Gypsum and build additional workforce housing to help it attract and retain staff.

The district has several housing projects in various stages of development. In addition to its partnership with Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley on the Third Street neighborhood in Eagle, the district welcomed its first residents at its Miller Flats apartments in Edwards in October. The remaining 27 units are expected to be open in April 2024. Looking forward, the bond will support its employee housing projects in Minturn and Gypsum.

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Wilson said it might be too early to say these advancements in employee housing — as well as other advancements with staff salary and professional development changes — have made a difference in its ability to recruit and retain staff.

“As our Miller Flats property was not ready for occupancy until October and that was only for five of our employees, it was not super helpful as folks had to break current leases,” Wilson said.

“We need to be able to continue the salary increases to support our staff and make the cost of living more tolerable,” she added.