Andrea Johnson/MDN Minot Public School Board members, from the left, Mike Gessner, Miranda Schuler, Jim Rostad, superintendent Mark Vollmer, and board members Laura Mihalick and Bonny Berryman are shown at the regular board meeting Thursday. The board also held a board retreat Thursday to discuss future school planning.

Filling teaching jobs promises to be a challenge for both the Minot Public School District and the Minot Head Start Program.

Assistant Superintendent Kim Slotsve told the Minot school board Thursday that there will be 31 teaching positions to fill this fall, due to some teachers resigning or planning to retire after this school year. There will be 17 open positions at the secondary level and 14 at the elementary level. Some will be considered hard to fill, including in areas such as special education, counseling, or mathematics, although school districts are finding it harder than usual to fill positions in many different areas.

“We are looking at attending some job fairs for the first time,” Slotsve remarked.

Other school districts in the state have been recruiting recent Minot State graduates for teaching positions. MSU, which has a teachers’ college, has often had education majors work in the Minot Public Schools for different class projects and in other capacities. A number of those recent graduates have traditionally ended up being hired by Minot Public Schools.

But, Slotsve remarked, “When (we) start getting competition from Bismarck and Fargo, we need to step up our game too.”

Karen Knowles, the director of Minot Head Start and Early Head Start, is preparing to submit a grant application for federal funding for the next school year. She asked the board for permission to reduce the number of children the program is funded to serve next year from 311 to 244. She would use the funding freed up by the reduction to raise the salaries for teachers in hopes of recruiting more employees.

Because of a federal vaccine mandate, the Head Start program was forced to fire 18 percent of its staff who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in December, which resulted in closing six Head Start classrooms and three Early Head Start classrooms. A judicial decision stayed that decision in January and the Minot Head Start was able to re-open one of the classrooms and serve an additional 14 students. All of the employees who had been fired were contacted and asked if they were interested in coming back, but most were not. Knowles said Thursday that the Head Start program is currently serving only 198 children.

Knowles told the board on Thursday that the Head Start program needs to raise salaries for its employees to be more competitive with other businesses in the Minot area. The school board approved her proposal unanimously and board president Jim Rostad said it was long overdue.