Similar to Athens City Schools, Limestone County Schools is also seeing a decline in applicants for teaching jobs.

“We are seeing a decline in the pool of applicants applying for teaching jobs in Limestone County, which is an alarming trend we have to watch closely. I believe the more rural areas of our state are suffering far worse with staffing shortages than North Alabama,” Executive Director of HR and Operations Bill Tribble said.

However, Tribble does not believe LCS is experience a staffing shortage.

“Overall, our district is in good shape when it comes to staffing our schools. Obviously with the great job market in North Alabama, it has made staffing challenging. Our area of greatest need is our classified positions in our schools,” Tribble said. “Jobs such as Child Nutrition Staff, Instructional Assistants, and Bus Drivers still seem to be the most challenging positions to fill.”

He went on to say, “these are typically our lowest paying jobs; however, last year our Superintendent and Board Members made a commitment to give all our employees a 6 percent raise, which included our classified staff. That did put those employees’ salaries above many other school districts around Limestone County.”

There are currently 19 classified opens, one administrative, and two certified positions open.

“However, that number [classified positions] can be misleading, because some of our positions are based on student need, i.e. special education instructional assistants. This number normally fluctuates throughout the school year,” Tribble explained, also saying that for nine and 10-month certified positions many times they purposely don’t hire after February due to a severely prorated salary.

LCS has several ongoing initiatives to recruit and retain quality employees, including:

• LCS annual job fair:
• “We will be holding our annual job fair this year on April 13, 2023, at Athens State University. We are very excited to partner with Athens State to create a more centralized location for all of our schools and departments to come and recruit staff for anticipated openings for next school year,” Tribble said.
• Grown Your Own:

• “Our Career Tech Center offers a Teaching and Learning Class for 10th-12th grade students who are aspiring teachers. Our Board last year budgeted money to actually pay the students to work with our elementary schools, almost like student teachers,” Tribble said. “It is a great way to help with our staffing needs as well as provide our students with ways to make money and see if being a teacher is really something they want to pursue in a career.”
• Limestone Lead:

• “A new program that our HR department started this year that looks to grow our next school administrators for Limestone County,” Tribble said. “We are so thankful for our partnership with Patty Maze, Director of the Regional In-Service Center who was instrumental in getting our program off the ground. Mrs. Maze along with Carmon Parris, LCS HR Coordinator, built a program customized to Limestone County’s needs.”
• Recruitment:

• “Nathan Fogg, LCS HR Coordinator, attends college career fairs in the spring to recruit students who will be graduating in education or counseling fields to come work in Limestone County,” Tribble said.

Classified positions are the most challenging to keep staffed.

“Instructional Assistants and CNP workers would be the two hardest to keep staffed,” Tribble said.

Conversely, PE and history teachers are the least challenging to find.

Finding substitute teachers continues to present a problem for some schools.

“Some schools tend to fare better than others. Our Board again this year approved for all our schools to have two permanent subs at every school every day,” Tribble said. “This has really helped to quickly react to staff members who may get sick at school and need to leave or last-minute emergencies.”