Upstate SC school districts work together to find teachers
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Several dozen school districts in the Upstate are pooling resources to recruit teachers.
The new marketing campaign, called Teach at the Top, was in the works before the pandemic exacerbated teacher shortages statewide. Now, the districts say it’s even more critical.
The effort is a collaboration between the 23 Upstate school districts and three nonprofits. The hope is that they will be more successful working together than competing against each other.
It’s modeled after a regional cooperation between local governments to promote the area to businesses. That effort, Ten at the Top, has shown that one of the biggest challenges is simply getting your name out there, said Ten at the Top’s executive director, Dean Hybl. The biggest competition comes from other parts of the country, not neighbors.
“If there are people coming from other parts of the country that have an interest in moving to the region to work and live, that’s a win for the whole region no matter where they end up,” Hybl said.
The conversations that led to Teach at the Top started in 2015 when Ten at the Top organized a meeting between education leaders in the 10 Upstate counties. One of the biggest problems districts reported was teacher recruitment and staff shortages.
By 2019, the group made teacher recruitment a focus. They decided to create a digital marketing campaign with one centralized website that would promote the region as a whole and connect potential employees to information on jobs in each district.
“Instead of having 23 districts doing their own thing, can we try and centralize things and make it easier for folks to find their pathway into the classroom?” said Catherine Schumacher, head of Public Education Partners, an education nonprofit in Greenville that’s...