The Greene County School Board recently approved an incentive for staff considering retiring at the end of this school year.

Superintendent Tim Christensen says the district has two retirement policies. The first one is the voluntary early retirement policy, which Christensen notes is used as a financial tool to replace a retiring staff member who is at the higher end of the pay scale with a newer teacher at the lower end of the scale, in order to save the district money in the general fund. The other policy allows for retiring staff members to be paid the daily substitute rate for accumulated sick days that are not used. The retiring staff member must be at least 55 years old and worked for the district for ten years to qualify for either policy.

Christensen points out that since the Board chose not to enact the voluntary early retirement policy for this year, they decided to use the regular policy, along with an extra incentive of $1,000 if the retiring staff member submits their form by January 14th, instead of the normal deadline of February 28th. Christensen explains how this benefits the district.

“The biggest thing in education right now (is) that if you talk to anybody, there is a shortage of teachers, there’s a shortage of all employees, I think everybody knows that. So we need to be able to advertise and try to hire employees just as soon as possible. Last year we were able to do that and got some great candidates and great people that we hired. And it makes a big difference if you can advertise on January 15th compared to March 1st.”

Christensen adds the $1,000 incentive is a one-time offer by the district and is not part of the regular policy.