ALBERTON - There has been a nationwide teacher shortage across the United States, but that hasn’t been a problem at the small Alberton School District.
The issue the Mineral County district is trying to solve has been attendance in the classroom.
The students of the Alberton School District will start the year with a whole staff of teachers, many of whom are returning members of the team, and Chris Whiteman, Alberton’s principal, credits a four-day school week as part of the reason teachers want to stay.
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“We’ve been really lucky we’re doing some great things out here that are attracting people out to our school the four-day work school week is a very big bonus for folks especially if they have kids at our school they can have the same schedule. So just making sure that we’re able to meet the basic people needs of the education first and then we’ve been real lucky to find some quality educators for our school.”
However, even with the four-day school week, there has been a decline in attendance among students in the district, a lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The district’s new superintendent — Damian Droessler — says attendance has been better to start the year for the students but he believes the entire community can help encourage the students to attend class.
“I think a big thing that we’re pushing early on that we want to continue is the community engagement as we mentioned about the Covid having residual effects. We kept people out of the building so that our students were protected during the COVID phase and so now I’m trying to bring that community back and get the re-engagement with the school and bridge that to make it one large district that includes the parents, the grandparents, and the fellow community members all a part of the same school district.”
Droessler plans to start doing that with a community engagement day at the Alberton School on Sept. 19, 2023.
