Guilford School System Eyes $54 Million Grant To Help Retain And Recruit Teachers

Guilford County School officials are looking at ways to recruit and retain teachers at some of the districts most challenged schools. Part of their plan includes offering financial incentives to teachers who reach performance benchmarks.

The district hopes to secure a $54 million federal grant from the Teacher Incentive Fund.  The money would allow administrators to focus on more than 20 schools that face poverty and other challenges.

“We took a look at how we could really make a difference by leveraging this program to reduce some of those achievement gaps, to reduce the disparities in out of school suspensions, to attract more teachers to these schools and to stay at these schools because of the additional pay,” says Amy Holcombe, Guilford County Schools executive director of talent development.

She says staff in the selected schools would receive a bonus, but teachers would receive the most compensation. That could range anywhere from an extra $2,000 to $43,000, depending on their success in the classroom.

“We are losing about 600 teachers a year, so the tool that this grant will give us is the ability to recruit and retain teachers by implementing a performance-based compensation system within our overall human resource strategy,” Holcombe says.

She adds, “I think this will make us highly competitive with surrounding counties and surrounding states that are recruiting teachers away from North Carolina.”

Holcombe says around 2,000 employees would be impacted if the grant is approved. Teacher training would begin next summer.

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