ANSON — Spearheading the search for new Anson County teachers, Dr. Josh McLaurin has faced the good, the bad, and the ugly on his hunt to recruit educators to the district.
While on the trail, McLaurin traveled to four of the state’s largest universities. Regarded as the top two teacher recruiting schools in North Carolina, McLaurin first stopped in at East Carolina and Appalachian State.
“There are 271 graduates coming from East Carolina this Spring,” shares McLaurin, adding that Appalachian State is projected to have about 275 graduates from their teaching program.
East Carolina informed McLaurin that this is the first year the school has had under 400 graduates from their program, while Appalachian State reports that in a normal year they would anticipate 350 graduates.
McLaurin notes that one circumstance from his travels he found interesting was, “There were 115 different school districts that came from nineteen different states to recruit from our two biggest schools in North Carolina. Not only are we in competition with other districts in North and South Carolina, we are now in competition with districts all across the nation,” he laments.
When leaving the recruitment fair, McLaurin had an opportunity to speak with other recruiters on their shared walk back to their cars.
“I asked them, ‘ What makes you want to come to North Carolina? Why would you come from Alaska or Arizona all the way to North Carolina?’ Their simple answer back to me was, ‘We pay enough that we can come in here and grab four or five teachers from these two [schools].’”
Two of the smaller schools pursued by McLaurin are UNC Pembroke and UNC Charlotte, with 36 and 94 seniors graduating respectively from their combined education programs.
“We are projecting that when you figure the state has a little bit under 8% attrition rate, 12% attrition rate for beginning teachers, the state of North Carolina is going to have to fill 8,700 teacher vacancies this year,” comments McLaurin.
McLaurin recalls that by day 40 of the last school year, North Carolina was still short 3,000 educators across the state.
Getting to the ugly, McLaurin reports, “We are projecting that number to be higher this year, and this year is not even the bad year. Next year is the year that is going to be really tough as far as recruiting teachers.”
Recognizing the work of high school Principals Chris Stinson and Carri Decker, Dr. McLaurin chose to save the best for last.
Stinson and Decker are involved in a teacher cadet curriculum, aimed at encouraging Anson County school students to consider a career in education.
“Ms. Decker found where we can offer an Associates of Arts and Teacher Prep so that our students can graduate from the Early College or from Anson High School with an associates degree and have those credits there ready to go,” boasted McLaurin.
Another encouraging prospect announced by McLaurin is a teacher assistant apprenticeship available to students through South Piedmont Community College.
“We finalized everything with Wingate so that we are going to be able to send students to Wingate’s teacher assistant program. With the Gateway Scholarship we will be able to get them back to Anson County with almost zero debt for them,” said McLaurin, proud to find a silver lining.
