During their regular meeting on June 14, the Mid-Prairie Board of Education voted unanimously to start providing a monetary incentive for hiring teachers in Iowa Department of Education-identified shortage areas. New teachers hired, who meet the criteria of the Department of Education list, will receive a $5,000 bonus, with the first half paid at the beginning of the teacher’s first year and the second half paid at the beginning of their second, as long as they’re still an employee of Mid-Prairie.

Superintendent Mark Schneider said other school districts in the region, such as Washington and Ottumwa, have also committed to a signing bonus.

“Hiring any teacher is becoming more difficult,” Schneider said. “For fifth grade at the middle school, we had four applicants, and that’s not even identified as a shortage area yet. I received three emails just today from superintendents who are hiring elementary teachers and can’t find people to apply.”

Within the identified shortage areas, Mid-Prairie is still looking for a high school math teacher for which they’ve had no applicants, high school special education, for which they’ve had one applicant, and Spanish, for which they’ve had one applicant.

However, when Schneider proposed the hiring bonus to the school board, he recommended one hire be excluded: Lisa Kesten, an elementary special education teacher, who is his daughter. Schneider recommended to the school board that Kesten be ineligible to receive the bonus, but, after lengthy discussion, the school board voted unanimously to hire Kesten and offer her the shortage-area bonus.

Special Education Director Amy Shalla said that Kesten was a strong candidate and thinks she will be an asset to Mid-Prairie’s teaching team. Schneider said he was not involved in the interview process in any way for Kesten’s position, for which she was one of two candidates.

“The reason I recommend [that we exclude Kesten from the bonus] is that I don’t want the public thinking that the reason I’m recommending an incentive for shortage areas is because one of my children is involved,” Schneider said.

Gabrielle Frederick made the first motion to offer the signing bonus to all shortage-identified teachers, excluding Kesten, but the motion did not receive a second and died on the floor.

Denise Chittck then moved to offer the bonus to all shortage-area teachers, which was seconded by Mary Allred but the vote was split 3-3 (Jeremy Pickard was absent).

“This is a hard one for me because I do want to respect Mark and I do totally understand where [he’s] coming from and I know people talk—we all know that,” said board member Jodi Meader. “But I also believe that special education is definitely a shortage area that we have and, from what I’ve read, we are very lucky to have gotten [Kesten] to come here.”

The board members agreed that the decision was a difficult one, due to perception of the incentive being offered to a member of Schneider’s family.

“I just don’t think that [Kesten] should be signaled out because of where she came from,” Chittck said. “She is on this list, the Iowa Department of Education list of shortages. There’s no reason just because of her last name that she shouldn’t get the same thing that any other teacher is going to get… we’re not doing this because she applied, we’re doing this because there is a real shortage of teachers.”

Finally, Frederick made a motion to offer the hiring incentive to all shortage area teachers, including Kesten. Chittick seconded the motion and it passed unanimously.

Schneider said he plans to continue offering the incentive in the future.