State Board of Education hosts meeting in Poplar Bluff

Representatives with the State Board of Education met at Poplar Bluff High School on Monday afternoon to discuss early childhood education access, teacher recruitment, mental health service and workforce development with members of the 8th Congressional District.

Nancy Bowles, PR with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said she’s pleased with the turn out of about 60-70 people, which included people from different school districts in the area, business leaders, elected officials and students. She said people were put into different groups to discuss questions related to the topic. The goal, she said, was to get people with different backgrounds to contribute to the conversation and to provide a variety of potential solutions to the problems.

The groups were presented with different questions related to each topic. For early childhood education, they were asked about ways to improve access to high quality education in the region.

Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven attended the meeting along with State Board of Education members Kim Bailey, Carol Hallquist and Mary Schrag. The goal of the meeting was to discuss issues facing education and educators as well as discussing possible solutions to the issues.DAR/Michael Shine

In general, the responses were focused around transportation and getting students to read earlier through day care and head starts.

For teacher recruitment and retention, they were asked about how communities could help recruit teachers to the area and what strategies could be used to encourage teachers to stay.

“We have to support our teachers. A lot of our teachers don’t feel supported because of how our schools have to operate,” Michael Owen, with Poplar Bluff R-1, said. “As administrators and a community, we need to support teachers. I don’t think the pay defines it.”

When prompted to define support, he brought up that some administration has been trained with the idea that the student or the parents are always right, but that isn’t automatically true. Owen said the district needs to have faith that “our teachers love their students” and want to do what’s best for them.

Owen also brought up the increasing demand for what teachers are being expected to do and the idea that if something is being added to their plate then something else needs to be coming off to keep teachers from getting burnt out or leaving the career path.

When it comes to attracting teachers to the area, Owen said being part of a rural part of the state makes it harder because people aren’t likely to come to the area unless they’re originally from it.

His sentiments were echoed during the at-large discussion period with a focus on supporting teachers, some talk of pay and discussing ways to help attract teachers by aiding with student loans or offering ways to continue their education.

The students in the room were asked whether any of them were interested in becoming teachers — or if any teacher had ever encouraged them to consider it.

None of the students said a teacher had encouraged them to consider it as a career and only one said they were interested in going into education.

“I have really close relationships with my teachers, my superintendent is here, my counselor is here and I love being able to have relationships with them,” Neelyville student Hailey Stewart said. “I know it’s hard, you’re with a lot of students — we’re bad, we’re annoying, you’re with us 24/7. I’m with my teachers more than my own parents. I want that. I like the relationships, the teaching. Teachers are teaching doctors. I would love to watch one of my students succeed and grow and become a successful person and become who they are.”

The administrators and teachers in the room largely said they hadn’t encouraged students to consider it as a career path.

“We have to promote our own (industry),” Lori Wilson with West Plain R-7 said. “Both of mine (kids) are going into education. I didn’t tell them to because I know what it’s like to deal with parents. Parents, legislatures, they don’t make our teachers feel appreciated.”

The next topic was focused on mental health and the overall well-being of the students. The groups were asked to discuss what resources are available or needed in the area to help students overcome “obstacles to learning.”

Several of the smaller districts talked about having limited access to resources such as social workers. Ken Jackson, with DESE, brought up that money can solve a lot of problems, but doesn’t fix everything.

Most of the conversation was focused around counselors, teachers and social workers being the primary resource when a student is struggling with something. Superintendent Debra Parish with Neelyville R-IV said not all the needs are being served.

One of her councilors, Holly Dobbins, brought up just how much has changed in counseling since she went to graduate school 13 years ago and spoke on the difficulty she’s had to expand what she knows about and therefore what she can help students with.

“Since then, I get one (professional development day) a year,” she said. “I do not like that as a councilor I get one workshop in November and I have to pick what session I can go to. I can go to this one on anxiety, but I have a student dealing with this other issue.”

Several districts did discuss what they’re trying to do, even with limited resources. These include starting food pantries or clothing panties to help students or families who struggle with access to those. Another brought up being able to provide free meals to students during the school year.

The final topic was focused around helping students find jobs after college and addressing the needs that local businesses have.

Poplar Bluff R-1 Superintendent Dr. Scott Dill brought up that studies are finding young people will end up changing careers five or six times during their lives, which means it’s not so much a question of what students need to succeed in a particular field, but what they need to succeed in any job.

The largest things were better communication skills both verbally and through writing as well as personal responsibility and the ability to learn.

The ability to learn, Dill described, is being able to read something, understand it and execute on what it’s telling them.

Another aspect of the conversation was focused on finding ways to identify students’ strengths earlier so that the schools can better encourage them to follow through on those strengths by finding a career that works with it.

Brad Massey with Briggs and Stratton brought up that one of the struggles he has with finding workers is lack of knowledge about what’s available in the area. For instance, he brought up that many places in the technical fields will offer assistance with college or college reimbursement for a promise to spend a certain amount of time with the company.

After the discussion, Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven and State Board of Education members Kim Bailey, Carol Hallquist and Mary Schrag opened it up to questions from those in attendance.

Vandeven said the governor has charged them with looking into ways to support early childhood education and offering teachers raises.

Both Vandeven and Schrag — who represents the district — said they were pleased with the turnout and the discussions had about the topics. They also agreed that it offered them things to think about moving forward and ideas to consider.

“The people who attended were very solution oriented,” Vandeven said. “The topics seemed to be areas of interest.”

She said she was also very pleased to see students in attendance because of the unique voice they can bring to these conversations.

Schrag said the board is looking to have more meetings in this style and that Poplar Bluff ended up serving as “a little bit of a trial” to see how things would go and fine tune the process.

Representatives from the State Board of Education are making plans to return to the area in November to have a similar meeting.

Tim Krakowiak, communications and marketing director with R-1, said it’s been a while since representatives from the board have come to the 8th Congressional District and it’s exciting for the district to be working with them to provide input from the area at the state level.