SJSD leaders strategize ways to improve education system

By Jazmine Knight

Hosted by the St. Joseph Company, various educators, school board members and experts gathered at Words of Life Church on Friday to discuss the current issues within the school district and how to combat them.

St. Joseph School District leaders discussed a number of ways to strengthen the education system, starting in preschool all the way to the end of high school. Some of the ideas mentioned included engaging families, doing home visits and fixing teacher retention issues.

Currently, Missouri sits at 50th in the nation as far as teacher compensation. Here in the St Joseph area, the starting salary for teachers is around $38,000.

Ashly McGinnis, assistant superintendent of education, said she believes that could be the reason behind the low teacher retention rates.

“After five years, 67% of teachers are leaving that career. And so that is our biggest challenge,” McGinnis said.

Another topic of discussion was about how to create bonds between students and faculty within our schools. The phrase “one caring adult” was emphasized to demonstrate how important it is for students to have someone they know and trust within their school. 

“So our dream is to really create a system so that every kid, maybe middle school is where it should start but definitely high school, has a coach, a team and a cause,” said panel speaker Wes Simmons, CEO of the 3D Institute.

“One caring adult who has a non-transactional relationship with that child and is really just there to support and encourage and they’re not there to judge and degrade but to simply invest and mentor that kid from where they are to graduation and beyond,” he continued.

Ultimately, the school district wants to try and reverse the statistics. Right now, Buchanan County sits at 6.5% for high school dropout rates. This is in comparison to 1.7% for the rest of Missouri. 

Leaders plan to implement a competency-based education system. McGinnis described it as “a very complex method of instruction that a lot of people have some misunderstandings about, but it simply focuses on tailoring instruction to meet the diverse needs of our students.”

For the future, McGinnis said the solid staff the district has is a good start to improvements overall. 

“As far as strengths, our people will always be our number one strength,” McGinnis said. “We have solid educators, solid support staff, principals, administrators and we invest in those folks through “grow your own” programs and different initiatives to try and recruit.