MONROE, N.C. — Union County's finance committee proposed a retention strategy for licensed teachers at some of its hard-to-fill schools: Forest Hills High School, Monroe High School, East Union Middle School, and Monroe Middle School.
Union County Public Schools superintendent Andrew Houlihan told WCNC Charlotte they began the county's strategic staffing initiative last year. He said they are looking to make adjustments for the upcoming school year.
"Monroe Middle School is our highest priority school. It is our significant Title I," Houlihan said. "Poverty challenges that we have here are very different than other middle schools. It is one of our F-rated schools from last year."
The proposal suggests that teachers at the school in core subjects of English language arts, math, science, or exceptional children should be paid a $5,500 bonus. It was $4,000 for the 2022-2023 school year.
Educators at the other three schools would again receive a $4,000 bonus for the 2023-2024 school year under the proposal
Houlihan said judging by last year's incentive programs, it would help fill in a lot of the vacancies.
"The recruitment has become the issue for us. I'd say that school districts across the nation simply because there's a dwindling teacher pipeline so that we know that compensation matters," he said.
The issue of what will happen the following school year has not been addressed.
"That's gonna be a big challenge for all of us because we are using federal ESSER dollars for this retention bonus," Houlihan said. "We're facing a significant funding cliff in 2024 when these federal dollars go away so we're gonna have to figure out whether or not, we can absorb this kind of a strategy locally."
The Union County Board of Education will vote on the initiative on March 7.
Contact Jane Monreal at jmonreal@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.