JP Schools Families,

Our schools are paramount to a well-functioning society, and our employees are essential. While we are actively recruiting teachers, we are still experiencing the weight of teacher shortages like the rest of the state and country. To combat this challenge, we continue to utilize multiple strategies, including leveraging our in-house teacher certification program, partnering with over 30 certification providers to increase education graduates, contracting with an external recruitment partner, and spending over $31 million dollars to offer our tiered recruitment and retention stipend to employees. However, we know we must continuously look at new ways to bring in great teachers to help educate our students. 

That’s why we’re excited to share that we launched a new Adjunct Retired Teacher Program to help incentivize our retired certified educators to return to our classrooms. They will be used to cover vacant classroom teacher positions until a permanent full-time teacher is hired and allow students to continue receiving quality instruction from a certified teacher. These Adjunct Retired Teachers will work in grades 4-12 on a part-time basis and serve in critical shortage areas. To not negatively impact teachers’ retirement benefits, they will teach a maximum of two sections. For more information, please visit jpschools.org/AdjunctTeacher.

In addition to the Adjunct Retired Teacher Program, we’re also working to implement the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Associate Teacher program, a new statewide initiative that allows employees with associate’s degrees to be hired as teachers within public school systems. We are working with local higher education institutions to share more information about this new program with eligible individuals.

We are continuing to look for innovative ways to recruit and retain our teachers as we know their tremendous impact on student achievement. Thank you for your continued support as we work to provide the education our students deserve. 

Dr. James Gray