Summary:

Dr. Jim explores talent attraction and retention strategies in rural K-12 districts with superintendent Deron Stender. With 33 years in education, Deron discusses creative solutions to staffing challenges, emphasizing the importance of mission alignment, cultural fit, and proactive planning. Highlighting Creston’s Learn and Earn program, he shares insights on building a strong educator pipeline despite budget constraints and geographic limitations. The episode emphasizes leveraging community strengths and developing local talent to maintain quality education and ensure long-term success in rural schools.

Key Takeaways:

• Innovative Recruitment Models: Discover how Creston's "Learn and Earn" program is attracting student teachers by offering financial support and leveraging the district's unique community attributes.
• Proactive Talent Management: Learn the importance of early detection of staffing needs to maintain a stable and engaged educational workforce.
• Cultural Alignment: Stender emphasizes hiring individuals who align with the district's mission and values to foster a strong school community.
• Engaging the Community: Collaboration with the local community and utilizing its strengths can significantly influence recruitment and retention in rural districts.

Chapters:

00:00

Building a Talent Pipeline for Rural School Districts

07:52

Attracting Educators to Rural Districts Through Community Strengths

13:52

Innovative Strategies for Teacher Recruitment and Retention

18:43

Creston School Board's Unique Approach to Employee Retention

20:12

Enhancing Teacher Recruitment and Retention Through Innovative Programs

24:30

Creston's Commitment to Quality Education Over Online Alternatives

26:02

The Impact of High Demand on Student Teacher Selection

27:04

Overcoming Geographic Barriers in Student Teaching Programs

28:15

Innovative Funding for Student Teacher Support in Creston

30:33

Building Community and Retaining Teachers Through Supportive Programs

32:38

Innovative Talent Strategies for Rural School Districts

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Deron Stender: https://www.crestonschools.org/

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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That creates a lot of headwinds, and those headwinds become even more challenging if you're in a rural district. You typically don't have the discretionary funds in smaller districts, so you have to get scrappy and creative in building a talent pipeline. That's what we're going to focus in on this conversation.

And we'll dig into building a scrappy grow your own program. That'll highlight things every district can do to shore up their talent funnel. So who's going to be guiding us through this conversation? Today we have Darren Stender who is joining us and to give you a little bit of background on Darren, he loves working for children's staff in the community to support quality public education.

[00:01:08] Deron Stender: Thank you. Look forward to this conversation.

So I think it's going to be important for the listeners to get to know you a little bit better. So with that being said, what I'd like you to do is identify for us a couple of the key moments in your career that really helped shape your leadership philosophy and how you tackle your job.

And so That's my mission in life. And my legacy is to leave the place better than what it was when I came in and leave the people who were in place for people that I work with in a better place than they were before they met me. Yeah, through my 33 years in education, I've had lots of opportunities and experiences.

It's just tough to get people to come and look at rural schools as an option.

[00:03:30] Deron Stender: Yeah I guess growing up on a farm where I depended, the lesson that was there was it took everybody to feed the family. And it wasn't about me. It wasn't about any one individual in our family. And so that concept has just been always ingrained in me. And as I was an educator, it was about the educators and the colleagues that I worked with and developing.

And Our families and our communities. And that's something that I think I've developed internally, but then I also that I share with the people that I come in contact with and engage with. And I believe being active and engaged in your communities is very important in that process, working with your parents, working with your staff members, and then also making sure that you're growing the people that you're working with.

So the talent continues to be there because that's, as I get closer to retirement, one of the concerns I have is, I think everybody gets it at some point in your life is who's going to replace me. And, I think we all have this, a little bit of macho attitude internally that says, I can do it better than anybody else.

Our children are going to be in a good place and the support is going to be there for our staff and our parents.

You have your families. You have your school board. You have your educators as a leader within the district. Which one of those three stakeholders? Did you prioritize the most to drive the. Best outcomes for children.

But we give them a variance or conditional license. We put them [00:06:00] in there, and I always tell, all my colleagues and administrative people that, hire the right person. Doesn't mean the right person has to have that degree. That doesn't mean they can go into the classroom and provide quality instruction.

And actually the first thing that has to happen in those classrooms is the quality engagement that they have with the children and the relationships that they can establish. Because children know when they can't trust somebody or don't feel confident in somebody they'll still continue to learn.

But at the point of access of them gaining that knowledge is very limited when they don't have that trust or don't have that leader or don't have that passionate person that's there for them. You have to see them first and then everything else we can develop. We can teach them the skills for classroom management.

We can teach them the skills for quality instruction. But if they don't have it in their heart to be a champion for children, that's tough to develop.

Looking to bring talent into the organization. And the other part of what you said that I really liked is your emphasis on, what I call attitude and aptitude over specific skills. Now you need to have a foundational set of skills for the job. That's true. But I think what happens in a lot of different sectors, and I'm a private sector guy.

People over index for particular skills without really identifying attitude and aptitude, and that sets them on the wrong path. So I appreciate you sharing that. One of the other things that I think is going to be helpful for our listeners is to get a good understanding of the unique constraints and situations that rural districts face compared to suburban or urban districts.

So walk us through some of the things that We might not be aware of that. You feel as important that district leaders need to weigh if they're looking at taking over a rural district.

We're the large district in the contiguous area. And so at one time we used to think that, due to our compensation, larger school, the amenities that our community can offer, that it has available to them, being a regional hub having a hospital, all the things that people would probably typically want and need is no longer an attraction.

Because it's not exciting coming to Creston is not exciting going to Des Moines or some of those larger metro, urban, suburban areas. There's lots of things that people can do and engage in, especially our younger generation of teachers who are coming out. They want something that's, exciting.

That's going to provide them with a lot of opportunities. So while we face that, we do address that and our community does a good job of that. But as a school district, we know that we've had to look at. What are the alternatives to be able to support people when they come here? Cause we believe if they come and work in Creston, they're going to want to stay in Creston.

So then we were going out and recruiting them, and then we were paying for them to continue their education to work towards the endorsement, which is required by, the licensing board. And that comes with a cost. And that was also a challenge in trying to find those people. And we said, what can we do to attract student teachers?

And the difference was we were spending more money on the backside of trying to get people to go into education because we're paying for the education, which is a much longer track on the front side, we're able to get these, teachers coming out of the teacher prep programs. And when they do that, not only are they new to the, to our district, but what they also brought and what I've seen with our teachers is growth and our teachers seeing new concepts and because nobody was coming to Creston to student teach.

Because there were things about the community that you just couldn't change. It wasn't as appealing as some of the neighboring larger cities. So you can't really fix that piece of it. So what were the things that you did from a community attractiveness perspective that started making [00:11:00] Creston as a school district?

More desirable. You can't fix the town or quote unquote fix the town. It is what it is. So what did you do from a cultural perspective to make the district attractive as a landing spot for people that might have options across a number of different communities?

We've had this vision of making sure that we're addressing and developing our community in a sense that. Allows them to find things, we've got a lot of nature out here. We've got trails, good trails, making sure we get good trails that people can access for biking, running. We have lakes around us and using that as a resource.

And especially with new teachers, when we average about 17 a year it's really important work that both the community and the school district has done together. Because we know if we do, neither one of us can survive alone. And so when we work together on developing that culture, developing these opportunities that attract people, that's where we found that we've had some success.

And and that goes as far as even housing, developing quality and affordable housing for people to come into our community to be able to live. And especially with new teachers, when we average about 17 a year, they need a place to live and they need some place that's got quality and affordable.

And I think we provide that through the work that we've done with our community together.

And how did that shape how you change direction and tried something new?

So then we decided we're going to, we're going to do the, we'll go out and find people. What we found was, that doesn't work very well either. Because it's difficult to find people out there when there's so many districts that are, Also seeking the same people is a great opportunity that, the demand is high, the supply is low, so it sets up a very competitive market and that's where, we started to realize at [00:14:00] that point, we're doing all this work and we're getting our return is just terrible.

We're not filling our positions and we need these positions filled. So it was a multiple approach on, what do we need to do to get better notification? Because oftentimes we're waiting for people to let us know they're not going to be back the next school year. One of the first things we did was, gave an early incentive enticement.

So there's a benefit. They get so much money if they let us know in October, November, December, and January. And the benefit of that is that we've seen in the reward that has come from that is we have a greater opportunity to get out there and have access to people because we know what positions we're going to have available versus typically that's going to happen in March, April, and May. And by then, most of the qualified people are already, Employed or under contract

[00:15:05] Deron Stender: while just having those conversations, we typically have an idea of who we think may be, especially, the retirement level, we can guide that manage that as far as anybody else that's having life changes where we try to pay attention to that and be aware of that. And, of course, I'm going to say, when you come to Creston, a lot of.

The relationships that, when they're new teachers, they might have a relationship with somebody that's not living in the district and lives three hours away. So we're constantly monitor what's going on with our staff members to be prepared and to make that next shift into trying to attract and retain new staff.

[00:16:15] Deron Stender: That's where we realized we need to go straight to the colleges that have the educator prep programs and start working with them and especially providing the learn and earn opportunity for students to learn from our quality instructors that we have in Creston. And for them to be able to earn while they're in Creston doing their student teaching, because it's uncommon for student teachers to be receiving a stipend of any sort, whether it's for tuition or if it's for living expenses.

And this was an opportunity our district when we took it to the school board. We identified the challenges of the past practices that we have of not being able to fill positions and the board's been very adamant on, we're not going to do those online remote different types of learning styles.

Administratively, we, put our heads together and we said, we've got great teachers here. We know teachers can learn from us. What can we do to attract those student teachers to come to our schools? And, that's where the learn and earn program developed. We figured, looked at the cost of what we were paying to educate our non traditional educators who came back and were on conditional licenses.

And so we've offered a proposal, took a proposal to the board that will pay up to 10, 000 a semester for student teaching and 700 a month for a living stipend for student teaching. And and we do some criteria out there initially, there was a drawback clause because typically most employers are going to say, Hey, what happens if the person leaves?

If people decided they didn't want to stay in Creston after a year, if they were offered the position, and they had good, a good conversation at the board table. And I said, no, here's the deal. We believe people that come to Creston, if they learn our culture, They're going to love our culture. They're going to love our community and they're going to want to stay here.

And if they don't love our culture and they don't love our community, we don't want them to stay here just because they feel forced to because they accepted, the tuition stipend or the stipend for living expenses. We want them to know that when you come here, we expect that you're probably going to like it so much that you're going to make that choice.

That's been well received.

Two sets of people or two groups of stakeholders that might be irritated at this. So what was the conversation that you had with both of those groups to say, this makes sense. And to the existing staff who maybe didn't have this benefit, you're not losing out on anything. What did that conversation, what did those conversations look like?

And, so that's the result of that plan on the flip side of it was, yeah, our licensed instructors that we've had in our district. We're saying wait a second. So we're going to spend money there. But what about us? And that came back to the point of, hey, the more hands we have helping, that reduces the load on everybody.

And so I said, what do you want? Do you want to have 28 students in your classroom or do you want to have 18? Because that's what's going to happen when we can't fill positions. If we can't fill an elementary section, a grade, we're going to reduce sections. So you're going to have increased class sizes.

And that's what the focus was. And so what we did as well is we wanted to make sure that our teachers that were taking these student teachers into their classroom and assisting them, the board also approved a because this also came from the board. They said, what are we going to do about the people that are taking if we have an expectation that we want student teachers to come?

What about the teachers? What are we doing to? Entice them and support them and take any student teachers. And so we have a stipend that they receive as well to help support their work in addition to their compensation that they received to help support our student teachers through that process.

And there's a couple of things that, again, this school board has done a good job of making sure that we have all the pieces of the puzzle in the right place in order for this to work effectively.

[00:21:47] Deron Stender: This is our second year.

And if you add another 10 students onto their workload, Workload. That's going to be, crazy. But the other part is you're incentivizing them to take on these student teachers as well. So they're getting paid for the extra time that they're they're spending there in helping these these student teachers get up to speed.

What were your observations in terms of quality of life that you heard from the senior educators that were on the staff that were helping onboard and develop the student teachers? What did you observe? What was the feedback that you got?

So when we are able to attract and retain these quality young teachers, and we're able to let our teachers who are highly qualified to be the instructors in teaching them about the culture. We [00:23:00] all win. And what I've noticed is that our instructors, because typically we don't get a lot of new people coming in and doing student teaching in Creston, this has allowed our teachers to also get a different perspective, seeing things through a different lens through the educational programs from the many colleges that we are supporting.

And that's helped them become better educators as well. So it's not just what they're giving to our young teachers. We're also seeing the benefits of what our young student teachers are able to help and share that is helping our educators grow professionally as well.

[00:23:54] Deron Stender: Yeah, so it's making sure that your educators, are willing to step in and [00:24:00] support working with our youngest generation of future teachers. Because if we don't do that, if we don't grow that and we don't grow them and we don't support them, they're not going to grow. We have a lot to lose.

I hear this. People ask us all the time. How long will education be around just because we can't find people and I can tell you in Creston based on the school board's mission and attitude is, online we learn from COVID. That doesn't work for us. That doesn't work for our community out here in rural Iowa, and it wasn't successful to the best of our ability to try to implement it.

It wasn't effective in terms of what we know. Yeah. A person, a quality instructor in front of our children can do on a day to day basis. The relationships are the most important component to a student's ability to learn. When that's in place, you're going to see a lot of, there's a lot of potential for our children.

And that means, there's a lot of potential for our future.

[00:25:03] Deron Stender: Yeah, it took two months. And the reason why this happened so fast was The board I felt was getting frustrated with administration because we weren't able to fill positions and then, we were increased increasing class sizes. We were making unhealthy, decisions based with the best information available to make it work.

And, I think there was this fear that, we don't want to go and utilize online resources, put kids in front of a monitor, and that's how they're going to receive their instruction. And that's why, their interest in their buy in was so quick and strong. They know, they want Creston to be the best educational provider in our region, best in the state, and their effort to make sure that happens was very evident in the process and the time that they supported us.

So we were expecting that we're going to get a couple and we'll be able to take them all, which is initially how it started. We were able to take on everybody that applied. And now in our second year. We have to be more selective because we're receiving so many applications to student teach that we can't take all of them and we can't afford to we don't have enough teachers actually to take all of them that would like to come here because of the learn and earn program and the student teachers that come here.

We always do a little bit of background information on them. When we meet with them, they signed a contract and agreement. And, a lot of them, what they say is, this is life changing for them. It's an opportunity that doesn't exist any place else. And this makes a difference.

How would you need to adjust this program for that sort of context?

Can probably get them by different parts of the state. They may have to do something differently up to 10, 000 for the students tuition during their student teaching semester. It's pretty high. Most of them probably average between 6 and 8, but it's up to the 10, 000. It removes the barrier of the location of where you're at, because now we're receiving applicants from northeast Iowa which, and we're in the southwest corner, places that weren't willing to work with Creston or probably send their student teachers, that far away is, no longer an obstacle.

They can serve as your supervising teachers if you would be so interested in that. We've removed the barriers so people can't say, we can't because of this. We've pretty much answered all those questions for them saying you can because we're willing to help support that. We're willing to help support the student teachers.

We're willing to help support the supervision of the student teachers to make this work for everybody. So it's a good relationship all around.

I, I think one of the things that a lot of people might be wondering is where does the money come from? Because this is not something that you generally bake into a referenda or something like that. How did you pull that off and make the financial case that this makes sense for Creston to do?

Interesting things. And, with a very proactive school board, they said, how long are we going to wait for someone to make a decision on this? And they directed me to take a look at what does it cost? What are we spending right now on the backside of it with non traditional teachers coming back into education?

And then what's it cost to go with a model that allows our student teachers to come in and learn the culture, develop that? And learn and earn from our leaders in our school district.

I just remind people, take a look and see where you're already spending dollars and resources to be able to attract and retain teachers.

Or get them to come to your school district. I looked at our district and I know that we were spending X amount on the backside to help our non traditional educators that were coming back and coming to education after having a degree in the public sector or working in the public sector.

They're coming from, taking away from other opportunities in education. But to do nothing, and that was really where we were at, to do nothing and get the same results of not filling our positions, leaving our classrooms empty and forcing us into those unfortunate situations where we'd have to do online type of services for our children just wasn't something that this district and this board was willing to accept or receive.

What other impacts have you seen across the district? That's been an outgrowth of this program being put into place.

And this is our school. This is our community, and this is where we're happy to be and this is where we're gonna, where we're gonna continue our career.

[00:31:44] Deron Stender: One is make sure you have your school board is fully supportive of it. Two is making sure that you offer opportunities for your professionals that you're expecting to take on the opportunity to be able to have a student teacher in your classroom because the benefit of that is goes twofold.

And this program is attracting this program is allowing them to learn. And this program is allowing them to earn. And it's a win for our school district. And I think it's a win for our student teachers, our staff, our students, for sure, because they've got teachers that are going to be employed with us long term.

And like, when we started out, it always comes back to the children. And that's what this is for.

[00:32:43] Deron Stender: Yeah, the best way is to probably reach me by email,.

I think this is a really interesting conversation, and it brought to the forefront some innovative things that rural school districts can do to solve their talent crunch. I think one of the most important things that you mentioned that [00:33:00] stood out to me is that rural districts have to you. Do a couple of things in terms of their talent strategy one They need to be really disciplined about playing to their strengths And I think that's at a baseline a very important thing because if you're trying to compete On a benefits or amenities perspective against other districts.

You might be at a disadvantage so for those leaders in rural districts, you have to identify what's really great about your community and then Use that as a selling point to find people Thanks Who are interested in those sort of things to self select in. And I think that's an important aspect of your overall talent strategy that that's worth mentioning.

The other part that I think is pretty important is that when you're thinking about your talent plan, there was an element in the conversation where we talked about look for early warning signals and signs so that you can be proactive about what your actual needs are going to be. And the reason why that's important is that.

So those two things really stood out to me on top of all the other stuff that we talked about. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out. If you like the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already joined our community, make sure you do that.

And then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.