We’ve regularly reviewed staff turnover over the past few years and reported those findings to the school committee. Despite our best efforts at retaining staff in various positions throughout the district, and a cadre of long-serving staff members, we still lose some very dedicated and highly effective staff members.
There appear to be a few major reasons that people leave Gateway’s employment, with the number one reason being retirement (well over a third of all staff over the last several years). Many of those who have retired have spent most, if not all, of their careers at Gateway and all have certainly earned the right to retire and enjoy life without the need to respond to the morning alarm clock. However, some of our retirees don’t completely leave us as we have some who substitute for the district, others who continue to work on a part time basis, and still more who volunteer within the district. All of these help offset the loss of institutional knowledge and the vast experience our retirees have with the district. 
The second biggest reason people leave is to move into new positions in other school systems. Some of these occur because we have so few administrative positions so teachers who wish to move into administration, or administrators wanting to move into central office positions, often have to look outside the district. Thus we’ve had a number of teachers become principals, principals become superintendents or pupil services directors, and paraprofessionals become certified as teachers. Reflecting a growing trend is the number of staff members leaving for similar jobs in other districts due to factors such as better benefits, better pay, being closer to their home and children’s schools, or opportunities to try something different. It’s hard to compete with being able to drive only 5 or 10 minutes to work, and getting the same or higher pay, for staff who have been driving 50 or more minutes to work at Gateway. Even without a raise in pay, the savings in fuel and wear and tear on their vehicles is significant, not to mention the savings in commuting hours.
The last reason that people leave is because they’re asked to because of a reduction in force due to budgetary constraints, because their contracts were not renewed for various reasons, or because of poor performance. Thankfully the number of people leaving for these reasons has been very small in the past several years.
For whatever reason people leave, it’s always a costly process if the decision is made to replace them (and recently the district has been replacing fewer of the staff we have lost). I believe the greatest cost is the loss of experienced staff who have a connection to Gateway, other staff, and especially our students. That experience takes years to gain and may be the reason behind the many studies showing that a stable and experienced staff make for a better school system. However, there are also financial costs: the cost of advertising, interviewing, doing reference checks, providing mentoring, professional development, and benefits. We have been fortunate to date to find talented people who are willing to come to Gateway to fill various positions but, as with all schools, this depends to a great extent on what positions we’re filling. Positions in mathematics, science, counseling, special education, and administration often have few applicants while other positions tend to have significant numbers of applicants (English, social studies, elementary). The determining factor is not how many candidates one gets, but that one gets highly qualified applicants who wish to come to Gateway. As with any job, the more qualifications required, the more difficult the position, and the more lucrative other, similar jobs are, tend to reduce the potential applicant pool. With the somewhat negative public discourse about education over the past decade, some areas of the country are seeing a real shortage of educators as more and more people opt for another career field when deciding what to major in during college. While there is much work being done in this area, we will have to wait for some time to see if these efforts begin to pay dividends.
