ANSON — As summer draws to a close with a new school year rapidly approaching, Dr. Joshua McLaurin provided an update to the Anson County School Board on where the district stands with staffing for the 2024-2025 school year.
“We currently have four certified vacancies in the district. We had two vacancies at 8 a.m. this morning and then we picked up two during the day,” McLaurin said.
McLaurin said the district is steadily conducting interviews, and waiting for one of the potential candidates to formally accept the district’s offer, while the district waits for state licensure confirmation from another. McLaurin clarified that the two positions potentially filled are for a preschool teacher for the EC program and a Health and PE teacher at Wadesboro Elementary.
“We had two resignations today, one was a health and PE teacher at Ansonville Elementary, and then the second one [resigned] just this morning was an English teacher at Anson High School,” McLaurin said.
McLaurin added, those positions as well as some others are all being advertised, including a title one position for elementary school teacher for Peachland-Polkton Elementary. McLaurin believes the position will reduce class size, allow for small group instruction, or possibly an advanced teacher role.
“All state positions are full,” said McLaurin. “We are running continuous postings on our classified positions that are for school nutrition substitutes, substitute teachers for schools, bus drivers, substitute bus drivers, and activity bus drivers. On our job postings and our board report there was one for a teacher assistant at Peachland-Polkton, that one was filled between last Tuesday and Thursday.”
Dr. McLaurin said a position for an EC teacher assistant was also filled last week.
“One note is that our personnel reports are a lot shorter this July than it was last July which is a good sign. The other thing is, we are getting very close to our goal of making sure that we have a certified teacher in every classroom. Our goal is to get down to zero vacancies so we have a certified teacher in every class,” McLaurin said.
With school starting on August 26, interim Superintendent Brian Ratliff acknowledged time is growing increasingly short to address staffing issues.
“We all start getting almost chest pains at this point of the year because we are just a few short weeks away from start time. August 26 will be here before we know it so obviously we are very concerned about getting as many folks as we can on board. That is something that we will need to talk about, even in our future,” Ratliff said.
Ratliff went on to suggest potentially holding additional meetings to strategize how the district can hire more staff, or hire staff to get board approval to be able to make these hires.
“What we don’t want to do, I know none of us want to see this happen, is that there be an opportunity for us to fill a vacancy, get a certified teacher in place or get an administrator in place when there is resignations and then be having to do that after the fact,” Ratliff said.
Ratliff added, “We are going to interview as fast as we can. Our students deserve that at the very beginning, if at all possible. We do everything we can to make sure that that is the case.”
Touching on salary schedules, Ratliff explained that the step increases, or state mandated raises, are percent.
“What you see in the teacher and instructional support staff, the assistant principals, and the principals in non-certified and central office is step increases of 3 percent across the board. That is state increased mandates. There really isn’t any more to share about increases in salary,” Ratliff said.
State mandated increases became effective July 1.
Realizing the key to recruitment is to retain, Ratliff went on to say salary factors heavily into retention and therefore should be a continued goal of the district to look into.
“We all know that retention is the most powerful tool for recruitment and giving our students the very best that we can possibly give them in every aspect of school life, particularly when it comes to staffing. In that vein, we need to really consider salary schedules and what those look like,” Ratliff said.
