Westminster Public Schools tackles teacher shortages, mental health with existing staff in Colorado
First-grade teacher Germaine Santistevan-Watts greets her students every morning at the door with hugs and words of encouragement.
"It's rewarding. It really is. Seeing the kids just get so excited when they complete something, a target," said Santistevan-Watts.
She has been teaching at the John E. Flynn A Marzano Academy as a full-time first-grade teacher for the last two years, but it comes after years of never being in the teaching profession at all.
"I had been in travel for 27 years and got laid off, and decided I wanted to make a change," she said. "My grandson was in preschool, and I started volunteering in the preschool classroom, and I fell in love with it. The teacher said, 'Why don't you go back to school? We need teachers.' So, that's what I did."
She began working towards a new career in her 50s as a teacher and giving back to the community that raised her.
"I didn't really know what teachers actually did, besides just teaching their kids," said Santistevan-Watts.
"We're always trying to be creative and find new ways to recruit teachers and certainly to develop our own pipeline," said Kirchers Leday.
Leday is the Chief of Staff at Westminster Public Schools. The district has led the way with the highest starting salary for teachers in Colorado, but even that has not always been enough to bring in a new talent pool of educators.
"Nationally there are fewer young people going into the teaching profession and even some of those that go into the teaching profession are finding other avenues to go into instead of teaching," said Leday.
There were more than 30 teacher vacancies across the Westminster Public Schools district last year, which had to be filled by substitute teachers or other staffing. While they have worked one-on-one to help people like Santistevan-Watts become full-time teachers, they are now looking at ways to make a more cohesive program for anyone who is interested in taking the leap.
Last week, the district met with several current, non-teaching staff to kick start a program in which the district helps them through the process of becoming licensed educators.
"We had about 25 employees who expressed interest," said Leday. "We even have a gentleman who works in our custodial department who is interested in becoming a licensed teacher."
The goal is to remove barriers that may otherwise prevent staff from becoming full-time teachers by introducing them to local universities to learn about what it takes to become teachers, helping them evaluate if they have existing credits that can expedite the process, and offering incentives to go back to school.
"One of the things we have done in the past and we will continue to do is when some of our employees have to do their student teaching, well that's generally an unpaid time frame," said Leday. "What we've always done is we will continue their benefits, so there is no lapse in their healthcare, and then we do offer a small stipend."
However, it is also about making sure teachers feel encouraged to work even after they've started working that district leaders say they are prioritizing.
"We just created a new position, and it is called the director of wellness," said Leday. "That person is spearheading an effort to make sure that we address all the mental health, and social needs for our employees so that they can then be productive at work."
The new position was filled over a month ago, and the district is putting together some objectives for the role, with the hope this person can touch base with all of their employees in the district when they are experiencing a mental health crisis or some other crisis.
"We're responsible for bringing up the next generation of leaders, the next generation of physicians and everything, so it is really extremely important that we have people that are interested and we have people that are committed," said Leday.
"It's a lot of work, but it's encouraging," said Santistevan-Watts.
It's that feeling of encouragement, she hopes will guide even more people in working in the classroom.
"If you're on the fence, and you're not really sure, maybe volunteer in a classroom and different grades and just see if maybe there's something that might click," she said.
