Miller presents concerns to school board

During the public comment period of the September Hot Springs County School Board meeting, Andrea Miller spoke to the members about some of her concerns.

Miller started with, “I have come before you guys before. I used to work here. You guys all know me. In the past, I’ve brought some pretty pressing things to you guys. Nobody has reached out to me, so tonight I hope that you hear what I’m saying, that you receive it and that we can make some progress.”

“The last time that I was here, I spoke about teacher evaluation processes and how they’re used and how they’re not used, how they should be used within the district. And in my opinion, a concerned board would have reached out. They would have done some more digging and I haven’t heard anything. My words were kind of dismissed as a disgruntled ex-employee of the district. I’m not disgruntled. I just want what’s best for kids in this district. I still care deeply about the kids I’ve taught here. Just today I went to my niece’s volleyball game and I was embraced by many of my old students as I was walking into the building. I care about the kids and that’s why I’m here,” said Miller.

She continued and said, “A presentation was given about teacher turnover within the nation and teacher turnover in the state and then, just a few weeks ago, many of us witnessed another administrator resigning from the district. And being the digger that I am, I decided that I wanted to conduct my own research and figure out some more answers. When I was digging, I went through four notes and I found how many just teachers, not administrators, just teachers have left and resigned from the district since 2018. That’s when I first came to Thermopolis. How many of those were still in education and reasons as to why they left because it’s fascinating to me.” 

Miller then used colored cards in her comments to use as a visual aid. She said, “I do cards because I am an elementary school teacher and that’s what we do. This card is my first point that roughly 80% of the teachers who have left Hot Springs County since 2018 are still in education. So in a presentation, it was said that teacher turnover is a big deal in the nation and it is, I agree. But, within Hot Springs County, most of the teachers who have left the district didn’t leave the field. They left the district. I did not get in touch with all of them. Many that I spoke with said that they left because they were unhappy. They didn’t feel supported or because they felt as though they were being forced or had no other choice to resign or else their career would not go forward.”

Miller went on and said, “The next thing that has been coming up a lot in board meetings is the housing issues for teachers and people coming to Hot Springs County. I asked those who had left, was this an issue with housing? Was affordable housing an issue? And this brings me to a yellow card. Zero of the teachers who have left since 2018 left because of housing reasons. They left for other reasons. When I first moved here, I was a single mama, and I had a job and I had bills to pay and I was able to find housing. I was able to find childcare. I was able to find those things. And was it a stretch? Sometimes, yes, but I was able to do it. So I can attest to this.”

She added, “The last thing that I was looking through, just because as I came to this district, I was a new teacher and I was not given a curriculum at all. I was teaching with three other relatively new teachers. We were told to throw out what the team before us had done. We were given our standard boxes and told you have 30 hours to make a curriculum for first grade. And some of you, your children, were in first grade that year. For that, I apologize. We did the very best that we could. So that just got me thinking, looking at the teachers who are still here, because there are good teachers here. How many have stayed in a place where they can grow and where they can flourish? Because when you look through the board notes, there’s a lot of transfers, there’s a lot of different stuff going on. I get in a small district, you got to wear many hats. I understand that. But also there needs to be consistency for the teachers to have that guarantee and a viable curriculum. But also there needs to be consistency for the teachers for that guarantee and a viable curriculum and to get better at what you do.”

Miller continued and said, “In digging and from what I could find, I found that only five teaching teams from preschool through high school have remained the same for at least four years or more. Of those five teams, almost every single one has a direct family relation to somebody on the board or somebody in administration. So why does this matter? Why do all these stats? Why does it all matter? Filling positions is hard. We had a fine arts teacher who left the district recently, and it matters because kids need it. It is hard to find teachers, but the teachers who have left were still teaching. If those 50 some teachers were still in the district, what would our district then look like? When we have the teacher shortages, would we have these programs that were missing if they had stayed, if we had supported them?”

“A lot of things could be to blame. You could blame housing. You could blame a lack of eligible singles. I was a single mom. I moved here. I found my forever husband. I found the forever place where I want to live and raise my kids. You can blame No Child Left Behind because now we have all these accountability measures. You can blame the national media for spinning a bad light on teaching. You can really blame whatever you want. But in my opinion, the reality is the problem is within these walls. Measure your measures by the behavior they influence. Well, by that, administrators should be measured by the teachers they influence, those teachers’ successes and their longevity within the district. By that measure: not doing so great. The school should be measured by the quality of administrators. And again, the administrators are measured by the teachers and what they’re saying here. Again, in my opinion, not doing so great there. There is this idea of these bad measures and that bad measures you don’t measure what you intend for them to measure. Your school board meetings are in a sense a smaller portion of bad measures because it’s easy to pick and choose those good things to look at and to present on month after month, and to take administrators’ words as gold. But until you start listening to the teachers, the students, the community, you don’t really know how the district is doing.”

Miller concluded her comments and said, “In the end, teacher retention matters because [students matter]. They are more than my top scores. They’re humans with souls. And it’s time that you see past the smoke of the high test scores and see that the hearts of many of these kids are struggling because of the turnover, because of the negative culture, because of what you’ve created and allowed to thrive. We don’t need housing. We need a board who listens to their community and an administration who cares about their staff, not power.”

Board Chairman Sherman Skelton was the first to respond and explained he reached out to several staff members who were on a field trip and he said there were ‘“numerous who did indicate that housing was an issue for them. That decision was not made flippantly.” Skelton added that when people leave the district, he makes a point to try to get ahold of them and, “I don’t talk to all of them, but one of them specifically left because of housing. I understand that not everybody sees it that way, that’s a critical issue.” According to Skelton, he said, “I know specifically we’re looking for four months prior to coming here. One of them almost did not take the job because she could not find housing.” He also said one staff member’s rent went up $200 within a short time frame.”

Chairman Skelton also said that he had a conversation with Superintendent Dustin Hunt while he was attending a conference and discussed a compliance evaluation system. Miller replied, “I know the Daniels framework is one that’s recommended that’s what I presented about this, but it was not being used properly.” Miller provided her contact information for the board to speak with at another time.

School board member Clay Van Antwerp responded to Miller’s comments and said, “I think this is an example of us being graceful in inviting open communication because, basically, the reason we have changed the policy for public comment is so that we can get our ducks in a row. When somebody comes here and says 80% of this and 90% of that, it’d be nice for us to be able to have to get those facts like we have done, which have come in. Then later we go and get facts and then we come back and present. Teacher turnovers [has] been a big one. That was out of policy and we allowed it. But that is why we ask to have it. Come give us the information beforehand. So it’s an even playing field because when one of the points that she made about like teachers leaving because of housing, well, there have been problems with that. But what is a bigger problem is the ones that we have not gotten because they could not find housing. And that’s been how many times have we missed our top pick because they just said, hey, we can’t find suitable housing. And that’s not my words. That’s their words.” Van Antwerp gave a testimony about the limited number of open rentals and about a subject who travels from Burlington every day because he could not find suitable housing.

Chairmen Skelton added, “I had somebody approach me one time fairly recently in the community. They were talking about coaching and they said, you know, five years should be enough time for somebody to see successes or show successes. And I felt like, well, I’m not going to disagree with that. But why is it that we have a timeframe to show success as a coach but we don’t have that same expectation for teachers? One thing I’ve heard in the state, there’s a lot of dialog about tenure and I know why we have tenure. It’s a great thing and I’m glad that we have it. But there are people…We’re getting some of these results because of some of the people that are no longer in the districts.”

Skelton also said, “You fire for those things that you hold with greatest value. And so learning is our fundamental purpose. So if students are not learning, if we have some of these results in grade levels, there are a lot of transfers. We’re making a concerted effort to try to find a place where that person fits. So you will see people move up and down. But I will say that I believe that that your students and my students are worth accepting some turnover. We had a climate survey presented not long ago and there was one teacher at the middle school that said they are never engaged. And I said I would accept that turnover on any given day. If you can go into your job, whether it’s care, whatever it is, and you say that you’re never engaged, I would be all for it. Showing that person where their opinions in the state of Wyoming, because we’re not exceeding expectations because we have people that are not engaged. So I apologize if that ruffled some feathers.”

Superintendent Dustin Hunt added a comment and described that they want to do “whatever we can to get a music person in…we want to have the best music program we can have.” Hunt also said, “We should be embracing what the patron asked, which is what can we do in order to be competitive with other districts? We’re not the only folks that are looking for music people. If there’s one coming out of UW, I’d rather have the option of housing availability as a for sure thing for us. We are going outside the box to try to get staff members in the door.” Hunt added, “Then there are retention pieces that come with veteran staff. And I think that those are pieces where we need to talk about compensation increases for staff across the state and how we look compared to states surrounding us.”

School board member Nicole Weyer said, “Many businesses, not just schools across the entire state, are adding teacher housing and daycare. The things that our school has done…Out of the three biggest employers besides oil in our community, all three of those big businesses, the school, the hospital, and Gottsche all have housing.”

School board member Will Ferrell said regarding staff who have resigned since 2018 “because some of those had better opportunities, better fit for their family. And maybe there were some things that they weren’t happy with, but they would have stayed [unless] they had their opportunity to be a better fit for their family and to better themselves. And to hold that against the school district, I think is not right...There are obviously some people that left being very disgruntled. And that’s what’s going to happen when you work with this many people and that will happen. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that that amount of turnover is the school district and the school board and the administration’s sole fault. There are many other circumstances and reasons for that turnover that are out of our control.”