It’s no secret that employers across the country are having difficulty filling open positions. Republic School District is no different. While we pride ourselves on offering competitive wages, a desirable culture, professional development and supportive leadership; the landscape for employees seeking to join the world of education is changing. Therefore, we must change with it.

For open classroom teaching positions our number one priority will remain to fill these vacancies with highly qualified and professionally certificated teachers when at all possible! We deeply appreciate the classroom experience that these educators provide in our classrooms! However, due to a national decrease in the number of candidates who fit these qualifications who are applying for openings, it’s time to create additional options that can still allow us to meet our mission of effectively preparing students for their futures. Simply, there are few applicants for certain teaching positions. 

Moving forward, if a teaching position is open for an extended period of time with no highly qualified and professionally certificated teacher applicants, the district will consider filling this opening with a “content specialist.” While we are still determining the specifics, a “content specialist” is an individual with at least 60 hours of college credit who enjoys and excels at working with students. In addition, “content specialists” would ideally have expertise and experience working in the field in which the teaching position opening is in, for our secondary teaching openings. District support would be put into place to assist “content specialists” in becoming trained in important classroom management and pedagogy skills. 

Again, this is a “last resort” option the district will put into place, only if needed! For the upcoming school year we have two middle school science positions that have remained open with zero certificated candidates for over 30 days. The district has not experienced these difficulties in filling positions until this year. We know that there seems to be a demand for all types of employees in southwest Missouri and we are committed to putting the best people in front of our children! These are the first two positions that the district has encountered that are proving to be difficult to fill, so are opening them to be filled by “content specialists.” Details about this opening can be found at https://www.applitrack.com/republic/onlineapp/default.aspx?Category=Middle+School+Teaching+(Grades+6-8).

Please share this opportunity with anyone who meets our traditional teaching certification requirements, and also with anyone with a professional science background that enjoys working with students!  

Also, a full list of openings with application details can be found at https://www.applitrack.com/republic/onlineapp/. PLEASE SHARE this information to help us recruit employees!