![]() ![]() Second, we need to be engaging with families. This means ensuring that we have the counselors we need, that they are available to students, and that they have the resources and support to provide those services. First and foremost, we can start to address this by providing robust mental health services on campus. The return of students to campus means that they are bringing those traumas with them, and we’re seeing the consequences emerge in student behavioral problems, students struggling with academic achievement, and even occasional violence on campus. We also know that our students from marginalized communities were hit especially hard, with rates of death and illness due to COVID-19 being higher in those communities and access to resources being lower. We know that all of our students have faced real emotional and psychological challenges during COVID-19 whether it was because they lost of a loved one, lost a home, had to deal with a serious illness in their family, or simply because they could not engage with friends and family the way they normally would. As a trustee, how would you address the mental health needs of students and their families still struggling with the effects of the pandemic? What resources would you have the district bring to bear? The pandemic has impacted students’ mental health in numerous ways. We should also be building relationships not just with local educational institutions, but also regional and national colleges and universities, especially Historical Black Colleges and Universities and other institutions that training teachers of color, since we need to ensure that our workforce reflects the diversity of our community and our students. We should be encouraging young people and college graduates to go into the teaching profession, ensure that we are providing resources and support for those people getting the most-needed credentials, such as special education or substitute teaching, and ensuring that they will have opportunities when they get out of school. On the hiring side, we need to be creative in how we are incentivizing young professionals. We need to make sure that salary and benefits are consistent with the promises that were made prior to the pandemic, and that our faculty and staff have access to the resources (including health care) they will need to thrive in this new period of managing COVID-19 and other public health concerns. On the retention side, we need to make sure that our current workforce is made whole for the sacrifices they made during the COVID-19 shutdowns and re-opening. Tackling this problem is going to require us to get creative in both how we retain our current workforce and how we recruit new folks. ![]() What started out as a teacher shortage is now a shortage in substitute teachers, special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and bus drivers as well. We need to get serious about addressing staffing issues. What will you do as a trustee to help close the hiring gap? Staffing shortages are among school districts’ biggest challenges as schools struggle to hire enough teachers, bus drivers and other employees.
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