Aurora’s school district is testing out a stipend
The Aurora school district may experiment with paying some teachers and staff about $3,000 to see if the district can attract more candidates, fill more vacancies and retain more employees.
The pilot plan has $1.8 million set aside for next school year to attract and retain as many as 400 employees in hard-to-staff jobs. But in the long run, Superintendent Rico Munn said, the stipends could save Aurora money.
“This is a force multiplier,” Munn said. “If we can fill those positions ourselves, we can decrease our overall expenditures.”
Right now, when the district can’t fill certain critical positions, Munn said it must rely on contracting with agencies that help fill those jobs. There is an added cost paid to the agency.
The district’s school board is voting on the proposed budget on Tuesday. Officials say the money for the pilot program was set aside from a one-time increase of revenue the district received in the spring.
“We are really trying to be more strategic around how we recruit, retain, and develop our staff,” Munn said.
Over the past year, Aurora officials have focused on improving recruitment and retention. For instance, the next year’s budget proposal includes a request for about half a million dollars to send more principals through a University of Virginia training program.
This pilot, which the union opposed, would offer a stipend to all district nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists and speech pathologists. Special education teachers, secondary math teachers or secondary science teachers would be eligible if they work at any of 20 targeted schools.
The district selected schools that had higher turnover rates for these teachers than the district’s three-year average of 29 percent.
The stipend would be the same among jobs, but would vary if someone is a returning employee, or a new employee to the district.
In reviewing eligible positions, Munn said the district considered the number and length of existing vacancies, the number of applicants for those jobs, and how often the district had to seek help from an outside agency to fill them.
The district did not release detailed data on vacancies.
But in the case of nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech language pathologists, Aurora officials said they resorted to an outside agency to fill 27 vacancies in the 2017-18 school year. That’s out of approximately 160 employees serving in those jobs that year.
Munn said that the district will track data on fill rates, number of applicants and vacancies to see if the stipends make a difference.
“I think we’ll certainly have the data come August,” Munn said. “If it’s not successful, then we stop talking about it. If it is, then we start looking at in what circumstances.”
Several other school districts in Colorado and across the country provide stipends for hard-to-staff positions. Denver schools, for instance, offer incentives and bonuses for various duties, including working in a hard-to-serve school through their ProComp model. Research findings on the model have been mixed.
National research has found that hard-to-staff and performance bonuses can attract more candidates and increase retention, but knowing whether quality candidates are the ones staying is harder to say.
The list of 20 schools where some teachers will be eligible for stipends:
Aurora Central High School, Aurora Hills Middle School, Aurora West College Preparatory Academy, Boston P-8 School, Clyde Miller P-8 School, Columbia Middle School, Dalton Elementary School, Iowa Elementary School, Jamaica Child Development Center, Jewell Elementary School, Kenton Elementary School, Lyn Knoll Elementary School, Meadowood Child Development Center, North Middle School Health Sciences & Technology Campus, Paris Elementary School, Sixth Avenue Elementary School, Tollgate Elementary School, Vaughn Elementary School, Vista PEAK Preparatory and Wheeling Elementary School.
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