Batavia school district still looking to hire for key positions this school year

Batavia Public School District 101 has hired more staff for the 2022-23 school year, but is still looking to hire for some key positions, according to a hiring report presented at the Aug. 23 school board meeting.

According to meeting documents, the district hired 88 staff members between April and August, an increase from 79 hires in 2021.

BPS Chief Human Resources Officer Steve Pearce said 14 staff members took on different positions with the district.

“In comparative years of 2019 and 2021, I think we had three or four [staff take on different positions] each year, so that’s a big shift for us,” he said. “It should also be noted that these new staff that were hired, some of those are staff that are covering full-year leave of absences or maybe one-year positions. So they may not be staff members that are with us for the rest of their careers.”

Pearce said the district is one of many in Illinois that has had trouble retaining specialized licensed staff.

“Special education and student services positions are our highest turnover,” he said. “If you talked to folks in HR across the entire state and in Kane County, they would probably tell you the same things.”

Pearce said some specialized staff had resigned late in the summer.

“In the past, it was an outlier if we had staff who were hired and ready to work for the new school year in mid-August, and it was an outlier if someone would resign in late July and early August,” he said. “This year, we have seen more of that than we ever have.”

Pearce gave an example of a staff member in a position that has traditionally been more difficult to fill who resigned Aug. 11, the day before licensed staff members were returning to work.

The district currently is seeking a middle school speech and language pathologist and an elementary school special education teacher, Pearce said.

“Those are very unique circumstances for us,” he said. “Now we have these hard to fill positions once the school year has started.”

The district also has faced issues with hiring paraprofessionals and maintaining a diverse applicant pool, Pearce said. Paraprofessionals work directly with students with special needs, often through an IEP.

“I’m exceptionally proud of our staff and our special ed staff members in leadership positions for, despite having a lack of paraprofessionals, still having our kids properly supported in all of our buildings,” Pearce said.

He said the district should take a more active role in the recruitment process.

“Instead of us just having people come to us, which has been a very nice thing to have, we have to shift how we do this,” Pearce said. “We have to market BPS 101 to our diverse populations and also to all populations because again, our candidate pool was much smaller than I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t know if we can find trends or information or something to find out why do people work and what is it they really want,” Batavia School Board President Cathy Dremel said. “I think you might have made a really good point that we’re not selling our story very well.”