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Schools, Teachers in Short Supply

Posted on: Wednesday, 29 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Nancy Perkins and Dave Anderton Deseret Morning News

ST. GEORGE -- The equation may be simple, but that doesn't make it more appealing: More students means hiring more teachers and building more schools.

And in a county where work-force housing is nearly nonexistent and land is going for premium prices, fears are growing among local educators.

Brent Bills, business administrator of the Washington County School District, which serves more than 23,000 students in 34 schools, said the district once enjoyed a competitive advantage when it came to hiring teachers.

"We had long lines of teachers to come down here," Bills said. "Now, as the cost of housing has gone way up, it's very difficult to find teachers to come down here.

"We had a person we tried to hire for an assistant principal position and offered them the job. They came down here and shopped for a house, realized they could not afford to live here and came back and said, 'Sorry, we can't do it.' They didn't realize how expensive it was here."

Justen and Laurel Selman, both agriculture teachers at Dixie High School, have had a similar experience. The Selmans moved to St. George in May 2005, at the height of last year's real estate boom.

"We were having a hard time finding anything under $160,000," Justen Selman said. "Then we found one house where the people couldn't sell it. There were seven colonies of termites. The house was about ready to fall down. One of the termite inspectors we got said, 'Run.' We had nowhere to go. We ended up buying a fifth-wheel camp trailer. The only way we can stay here is to stay living in a fifth-wheel."

Now the Selmans are considering moving to more remote areas of the county in order to afford a home.

Bills said the district hired roughly 200 teachers last year and must hire another 200 to 250 this year. But many teachers have turned down positions or asked to be excluded from consideration for a job once they have seen the area's housing costs.

"You talk about winners and losers in the housing market. We're out of the housing market," Justen Selman said. "In my future, housing doesn't even look like something that's there. We talked to some Realtors, and they said prices are going to come down, but I don't think it's ever going to get down to where I can afford."

With the county growing faster than projected, Bills said student growth has been above 6 percent in the past two years, with this year's growth at 7.4 percent. Those numbers are expected to slide downward next year, although not by much.

"We're starting to see a slowdown in the student numbers," Bills said, "so that's a positive thing."

Trying to manage the present while planning for the future is a monumental task, says district superintendent Max Rose.

"We will be building schools at a pace to keep up with the growth," Rose said, noting the district has been surprised in the past on where the county's growth occurred.

"The growth is occurring in an uneven pattern," he said. "On the west part of the district the growth rate is about 3 percent. In the Washington and Hurricane area the rate is about 7 percent. By 2014, we'll have a school population of 40,000 students."

If growth continues as expected, Rose said the district will open a new high school in 2008 and another in 2014. Twelve additional elementary schools, two middle schools and three intermediate schools also are lined up in the district's future construction plans.

"This will bring the number of schools in the district to about 50 schools within the next 10 years," Rose said, pointing out the plans are contingent on whether student enrollment projections pan out.

Paying for those new buildings will take another $150 million in general obligation bonds, according to the district, which will ask voters to approve the bonds on June 27.

By January 2008, Bills said, the district will run out of construction funds. A $99 million bond approved just two years ago is already obligated for new construction, repairs and additions to existing schools.

Voters also will be asked to approve an increase in the district's portion of the property tax levy. For the average homeowner with a $200,000 house, the tax levy increase will add about $55 to the annual property tax bill. Those funds will be used to place two days back on teacher salary schedules, add reading intervention programs in all the schools and continue developing professional learning communities within the district.

Even with the additional money, the county's cost of living will make it difficult to attract quality teachers to staff schools, said Lyle Cox, the district's human resource director. Cox said he is beginning to think it will take "desperate means to hire good teachers."

"I think there'll be public interest in this problem when we have three to four teacher jobs open in our schools and we're doubling up classrooms," Cox said.

Cynthia Birch is concerned not only with the quality of the district's school programs and its proposed tax increase but also with the way that money is being spent at her neighborhood school.

Dixie Downs Elementary is slated to become the district's first dual immersion school, with kindergartners and first-graders learning their lessons in Spanish and English. Birch, who has a preschool-age son, is infuriated with the school board for voting to approve the program.

"We are selling our home and moving because of this," said Birch, who now plans to send her son to another elementary school in nearby Washington when he enters kindergarten. "Our tax dollars shouldn't be used to teach Spanish to our kindergartners. We feel like we're being discriminated against, but the worst part is that they're taking our local school to do it and we're told we have to go somewhere else if we don't like it."

Ten percent of the district's student population is Hispanic, according to a March 9, 2006, ethnicity report. At Dixie Downs Elementary, that percentage is higher, with 159 of the school's 549 students identified as Hispanic.

And a Spanish-speaking family is hoping the program excels at Dixie Downs and spills over into their home.

"When we came here two years ago my oldest kid had a hard time in kindergarten," said Benjamin Zarate, who said Spanish is spoken at home but the entire family wants to learn to speak, read and write English as well. "I saw in my kid's face some frustration, so I tried to teach him at home, but it's hard for me."

Many of the students attending Dixie Downs live in rental housing and often move, which makes tracking their progress more difficult, said Principal Dale Porter.

"Dual immersion helps solve problems associated with mobile populations," he said. "The old framework at Dixie Downs doesn't work. The bottom line is we need to do what's best for the children, not what's politically pressing at the time."

E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com; danderton@desnews.com

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

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