ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – While many U.P. school districts are experiencing staffing shortages, Escanaba Area Public Schools Superintendent Coby Fletcher says his is not one of them.
“We’ve had a pretty good hiring season,” Fletcher said. “We start early, and there are several things that we do to try to attract quality candidates early on. Every now and again, we get a surprise going into the summer that we have to rush to try to fill, but we are currently fully staffed.”
However, he says a district can never have enough substitutes.
“With recent changes in legislation, teachers who retired last year, for example, have to have a nine-month period of inactivity before they can come back, whereas before it was 30 days,” said Fletcher. “That really, really pinched schools. So we get by, but it sure would be nice to have more substitutes in our buildings.”
Just before the end of last school year, the high school dedicated a new tennis complex with a total of eight courts. Fletcher says the complex will open up more opportunities for student athletes this year.
“It allows us to host tournaments that are fully on site,” he explained. “Previous to that, we had kids scattered throughout the city. But it also allows more of our students to participate in tennis because there are more courts to practice on. We have seen our tennis numbers really balloon over the last few years.”
Fletcher says administrators are continually looking for ways to help each student get the most out of their education.
“One of the things that we have always tried to do as a district is to put as much as we can out there for our students,” he said. “That would include just a quality curriculum in general, but it’s also in AP offerings or dual-enrollment offerings. It’s also in the number of extracurriculars that we offer, whether that’s in the fine arts area, whether that’s in the STEM area. It’s important to us to have all those things out there for our kids.”
