Real-World Strategies for Attracting Top Talent to Small Towns

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While all of these challenges are real, are they insurmountable? What if I told you that each one of those challenges could be overcome? What if I told you that there are scrappy things that you can do to build an organization that not only attracts solid talent, but keeps them around longer than the average organization.

That's the story that we will be digging into today. Joining us today. We have Rob Stewart, who is the district administrator for the Alma school district in Wisconsin. So what's Rob's story? He and his wife and his three children and three dogs live on the outskirts of Alma, Wisconsin.

ents on a given day, they're [: 00:01:00

In 2013, he moved into an administrative role that included duties as high school principal and athletic director and eventually transitioned into a role that included pre k through 12th grade as a principal. For the past six years, he's been a district administrator for the Alma School District, where he serves dual roles as the 7th through 12th grade principal and the district superintendent.

He's been a lifelong coach. Coaching both boys and girls, basketball, football, golf, and baseball. And Oh, by the way, he doesn't sleep a whole lot. Rob, welcome to the show.

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[00:01:42] Dr. Jim: I'm pumped to have this conversation and I think it's going to bring a really interesting perspective to the table especially given some of the constraints that you're dealing with in your district. But before we dig into the details of how you solve these challenges I think it's important for [00:02:00] us to learn a little bit more about the district landscape, your background and how all of that ties together into what you've done within your district.

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Absolutely beautiful location. Our school district sits right along the Mississippi River. Literally, our Parking lot overlooks the Mississippi river to the west and right behind our school building, our playground and our football field is the beautiful bluffs of Buffalo County rocky, beautiful wooded bluff area.

t and we've spent our entire [: 00:03:00

But it certainly is rural and our school district is made up of roughly 245 students pre K through 12th grade. Typical class size for us is about 17 to 18 students but it can get pretty small. My son is graduating this year in a class of nine and that by far is our lowest or smallest class that we've had go through Alma high school.

But my two daughters, one's in a class of 19 and one's in a class of 23. So again, we hover around that 17 to 18 mark. We're made up of just shy of 50 staff 47 staff to be exact, 28 teachers 19 support staff or teachers and administrators, I guess I should say. When you talk about rural school districts, I think we certainly fit the bill for that.

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[00:04:00] Rob Stewart: That's a great question, Jim. And I actually looked up some a few statistics regarding that before our meeting today, because we do have a lot of teachers and support staff that return to Alma. And a little bit later on, we'll talk a little bit too, probably about the co op that we have with our neighboring district where I graduated from Pepin area schools.

But. Together, we're about 13 miles apart. But I just, I looked at the 28 teachers that we have 12 out of those 28 teachers, either graduated from Pepin or Alma high school. When I looked at our 19 support staff, 10 of them graduated from either Alma or Pepin, so obviously we're looking at 22 out of 47 staff members, almost 50% come back home.

career. So to your question, [: 00:05:00

And this is where they want to raise their family and spend time. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we also know that's not going to fill every position. We are out there obviously posting our positions and reaching out to post secondary institutions and trying to find ways that we can attract teachers and staff that, that obviously didn't graduate from here.

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You feel resonates with them and brings them into the district because I think that's an important story to get across for other leaders of rural districts. How do you convince somebody or how do you make the case that this is a good place to work?

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You're going to be welcomed. Our community is very welcoming and our school district is very welcoming. Our staff will be there to support you just like they would for maybe a student that they taught 10 or 12 years ago and now is coming back as their colleague that's just the type of supportive community that we have here, both from a school district standpoint, but then also the broader community standpoint and just having that conversation and, it's one of those, it's a conversation you can have, but until you actually.

Get in the doors and feel it. I have a lot of teachers that will come back to me and that weren't local to start with and say, yeah, you're right. It, it just, it has that feeling. This feels home I'm welcomed here. And this is a place that I can see myself staying for a long time.

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Tell me a little bit more about the things that you're doing that Amplify the community feel informal and informal ways that drives your talent attraction strategy.

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And then since 2009. That cooperative has just continued to expand and become stronger. All of our sport sporting programs, all of our extracurricular and co curricular activities, I should say are joined together as one now. We've moved from, we were the Rivermen and Pepin were the Lakers and now we're the Eagles.

ome things with staffing. We [: 00:08:00

Now it's not just the Alma community. It's the Pepin community, the Nelson community that is right in between us. And all of that goes together and trying to bring together the resources that both of us can another area that I think Really stands out in my mind is we developed a community relations committee about 5 years ago.

And the goal of that committee was to bring stakeholders from staff members, administration. Paraprofessionals, and then parents and just community members. And so it's a pretty large committee and we came together with 1 task and that task was, how can we bring our communities together?

ese small towns used to have [: 00:09:00

And we decided to take it upon ourselves to bring that back. And so we started Alma Area Community Fest and it's flourishing every year now. What we do is we hold this event outside of school. It's actually held at our local Alma Rod and Gun Club. They got a great big facility, plenty of outside area.

And what we do is we hold it right around the start of the school year. But this event is not for just our parents and our students. In fact, what we Challenge. Every one of our parents to do is invite somebody in the community that doesn't have direct ties to the school district and ask them to invite them to that event.

And at that event, we have all kinds of different activities and games for kids, but also for adults. The school puts it all on we serve a free dinner with it. Our students and our staff are there working the different activities. And so that's been just absolutely huge with the with strengthening that partnership with our community.

row, all of our nine through [: 00:10:00

And they're going to be working with the beautification members on cleaning up and just getting ready for the spring of the year. And we do that every year. A lot of times during the spring of the year, we're helping our city crew fill sandbags. Thankfully we didn't have that this year.

We didn't have the flooding. But we do a lot of those types of things, right? We we try to give back to our community and get our kids out there working with community members as much as we can. One last thing that came to mind too while I was talking here, Jim, is we wrote a grant a few years back and one of the goals behind that grant was to offer some community events free of charge.

l sign fabrication class. We [: 00:11:00

And then in the wintertime she did porch pots. All of these events were extremely well attended by students, by staff, by parents, but also by community members and not just our community. Other surrounding communities as well. So again, we're just always trying to find ways that we can get back to the community and partner up with the community.

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[00:11:46] Rob Stewart: Yeah. Great question, Jim. And one that we continue to explore quite a bit as an admin team here we definitely want to take that to the next level. I would say right now we're at the surface level of having a Quite a few different [00:12:00] community members, business members come in and speak to our students.

We have a careers class that there's quite a few different folks that come in from the local community or surrounding areas and speak to our students. We do have a work experience course that many of our students partake in where they are partnered up with Different area businesses.

I think we have a strong connection with our farming community. We have a lot of students that are working on farms or other type of agricultural type positions. But we need to take it to another level. And then probably. Not to make excuses, but the difficulty is trying to find those opportunities in our small rural area is difficult.

A lot of them are going to require students to travel a little bit farther and trying to do that during the school day when you factor in that travel piece makes it very difficult. So we got to get more creative there. It's something that we have been talking about and we have some ideas. We've expanded our work experience program just this year.

And I think looking [: 00:13:00

And so again, exploring. How we can, how can we connect with some of our area hospitals and healthcare facilities, and even beyond that, looking at some of our first responders, we have some students that are actually this summer going through EMT training. And as soon as they're eligible, age eligible, want to join our volunteer ambulance department.

But we need to continue to research and try to figure out how we can make that happen in our area. Cause that is certainly. One of the struggles that we face.

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Hey, this is a step on the path for something bigger or better down the road. And one of the interesting things about the story of your district is that you've developed not only a pretty strong ability to attract that talent, but retain them for significantly long periods. So when you look at your education staff, I think when we were talking, it's 15, 20 years is in the district is not a rarity.

So tell us a little bit about how you've taken all of these things. And what you're doing from a talent attraction and retention perspective that's really led to these results.

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20 to 30 range. You're exactly right. [00:15:00] They certainly are they're coming here and they're staying here. Why is that? I'm a big believer in giving a lot of credit to our students. I start there. And we often joke around that we just need to get these people in our classrooms so that they can realize the support, the culture.

And the students that they get to teach every day, and that'll be enough to keep them. But it's not enough to keep them, right? Our students are great, so I like to give them credit. But you also have to, you have to figure out how can you provide the supports that these new teachers need. Not only that first year, but Year two, year three and so forth.

And so we developed a pretty comprehensive mentorship program. My administrative team and I did we started this work right when I came six years ago and we've refined it every year. But it's a very detailed program. It's spelled out month by month. So what we do is every new teacher is automatically partnered up with a mentor prior to the start of the school year.

so offered is a lot of times [: 00:16:00

They meet each other, they hook up, they talk about all kinds of different things and then they establish that relationship and then they get into the school side of it, right? So it's not just. Hey, I'm going to go through this checklist with you. Even though we provide them a checklist, it's much more than that.

So that happens. And that happens throughout the entire first year, but then it continues into year two and beyond. Okay. Another thing that happens as part of that mentorship program is all of our new teachers meet with our administrative team, which is made up of myself, an elementary principal, and then I have an assistant 7 12 principal that's also our counselor.

And we meet with all new teachers before the start of the school year. And we sit down and we take them out to lunch and, again, just sit down and have a plenty of casual informal conversations, but then we also start the conversation about, okay what do you need? How can we best support you?

ese other things, here's how [: 00:17:00

Okay, what are you nervous about? What can we help you with? And then it goes beyond that. My administrative team and I we're not in our office. We've got plenty of emails to check, but we're not in our office checking emails all day long. We're out and about in classrooms, all of our classrooms our tenured teachers, our veteran teachers.

And then of course our new teachers, and we're not in there to be intimidating in any way, shape, or form. We're in there. A lot of times we jump right in and we'll even work with students, small groups of students, and just help out. But we're in there just to make sure that everything's going okay. Do you need anything?

And then we always have these follow up conversations, whether they're informal ones or actually formal structured meetings. And especially with our new teachers, we're doing that more frequently. And again, those conversations are just around, Hey, how's everything going? What are some needs let's talk about, maybe some professional development opportunities that would be beneficial for you.

And those types of things as [: 00:18:00

[00:18:20] Dr. Jim: Digging in a little bit further into the mentorship program. One of the things that you mentioned is that this carries through beyond. The first year. So I'd like you to share a little bit more detail in terms of what that first year cadence look like.

How frequently are people are new educators in the district meeting with their mentors? And then when they get beyond year one, how does that cadence change? Why is it important to carry it beyond just the first year?

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So it's like a month by month checklist that they go through But again, we just provide that so we're not missing anything We're not missing, these little things that sometimes get forgotten right This is how you access your lunch account, right? Or whatever it may be.

So that's what the checklist is for. The cool stuff that happens that is much more valuable than the checklist is we also build in time at least three times throughout the school year where the mentor is coming in and observing the new teacher and again, not providing any. evaluative type measure.

It's more just walk, coming in, providing feedback. Hey, this is what I saw. Here's some suggestions dot, right? So it's not a intimidating type process. But the mentor goes in and observes the new teacher. The new teacher then goes in and schedules a time to observe the mentor. And a lot of times during those, it's very difficult.

, we're going in and subbing [: 00:20:00

Could be, maybe. Could be even having a high school biology teacher go down and watch the third grade teacher, right? But, the mentor teacher, been around long enough, knows the staff pretty well, thinks, boy, that would be a really good person for you to go check out. And so they help arrange that as well.

So those observations are happening. And that all happens during the first year yet, then moving beyond that to year two and three we don't have the observations continue that those stop after year one. And I think a lot of times the relationship has been established where it's probably not, it's not very formal in year two and three.

othing that we're monitoring [: 00:21:00

How's your relationship going with your mentor teacher, those types of things but otherwise it's nothing that is really monitored and formalized.

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[00:21:34] Rob Stewart: Yeah, I think it all comes down to not all, but a large chunk of it, Jim, comes down to professional development. And because when you use the word stagnant that's what comes to my mind .We have a three pronged professional development approach here that I think is highly beneficial in making sure that our staff are being exposed to plenty of opportunities to expand their toolbox.

essional development that my [: 00:22:00

I would say that's that's the foundation of what we do. A lot of that professional development beyond the culture piece is driven by what we are seeing when we are in the classrooms doing our observations, our walkthroughs, our formal observations, and we're finding those areas that we need to expose more of our staff to.

So that's prong one. Prong two is the systematic approach where. We bring in outside resources and for us, a lot of it is partnering up with our local CESA bringing in like crisis prevention training SEL training, maybe MTSS type training. This coming year, we're really excited about the partnership that we have focusing around two things AI and education is going to be a big one for us.

ons that are created for our [: 00:23:00

Curriculum and making sure that everybody has a guaranteed and viable curriculum where they've unpacked the standards. They've identified those essential learning targets and I can statements. That's such a biggie because that fits for everybody. You don't have to be just a reading or math teacher.

It, it fits for industrial tech. It has fits for Fiat health, preschool, third grade high school biology, whatever it may be. And that's one that we spend a lot of time and emphasis on. And again, we're using more of a systematic approach there because it does meet everyone's needs. And we're partnering up with our local CISA to come in and help with that process.

here our staff are basically [: 00:24:00

There's basically a very simple process. They come and they set up a meeting with either the building principal or myself, and we talked through that process. We talked through, Hey, this is what I'm interested in. This is why I'm interested in it. And so forth. And during that conversation, the one thing that we are always looking at is.

Sounds great, but how can you bring it back to your classroom? How can it impact your students? And then also, how can it impact others, other staff members, right? And so when our teachers go out and they seek these opportunities, One of the things that they do is they bring back what they've learned and it may not be for all of our staff, but they bring back what they've learned for targeted staff members that it fits with what they need.

And so then we utilize those individuals. So they come back from the professional development opportunity. Maybe it was a day in service or a 2 day getaway, whatever it may be. They come back and they meet with myself or the building principal a second time. It's a debriefing meeting where they tell us all about it.

They tell us about [: 00:25:00

And when I first came here, we were missing that. It was, Hey, I want to go to this professional development opportunity. All right, go ahead. And then that was it. There wasn't the followup component of, Hey, let's sit down and debrief and let's talk through this. And then also how can we take what you learn and share it with others?

We're, we got a lot of experts in our building. We're a small building, but we're filled with experts. How can we utilize those individuals, and utilize what they learn and train each other. And so we've really started to take a very proactive approach to that. And spend.

Extremely beneficial for our district.

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But when you zoom out. And look at the district as a whole and you look at how you've been able to attract people, how you've been able to retain people, how you've been able to develop people as well. It seems that you've done a lot of culture work. So tell us a little bit about how you integrated all of that into the broader culture, the mission and the vision of the organization.

How does that show up?

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And I want to, one of the things that we really strive to. To make better was the culture and climate piece. And it started with actually having all of our staff involved in writing our mission and vision six years ago, and we just did a very simple process where it started out individually, then they were partnered up, then they were grouped up and eventually we all came together.

And a group of basically [: 00:27:00

Cause that's obviously key. And that's one of the things that we hinge on here is student connections. Talked about high expectations and just the whole gamut growth mindset, solution based decision making respect, responsibility, all of those things. Great mission statement.

It was also during that time that we started what became known as Elma Pride. And although it wasn't a mission or vision statement, what Elma Pride became is basically our positive behavior approach program. And what we did with the help of some techie friends of mine, cause I, I didn't know all the back.

s drivers, custodians, lunch [: 00:28:00

It's right here on my phone. And basically any staff member can. Pick their name is in there even like our school board members are on it. They find their name They find a student that they want to award a pride point to could be they saw A student walk by and pick up a piece of paper on the floor something that's simple, right?

And they can award that pride point and the student then on it gets an automatic email that says Hey, so and awarded you a pride point, great job. Keep up the great work. It doesn't go into all the details about why, because we didn't want to create something that got too bulky where they had to type in, what what they saw happen, we wanted to just make it very quick and easy.

And then every week our elementary counselor takes all of those pride points and randomly generates a group of winners, right? It's amazing, Jim, how you'd think you're The kindergarten kids are going to be so excited about it. They are, they're ecstatic about it. But you know what? Our juniors and seniors are just as ecstatic about it as our little elementary kiddos.

going strong for six years. [: 00:29:00

You gotta have a vision around school culture, around climate, around student connections. But at the end of the day, you can't have a paragraph mission statement. You gotta have something that is very simple, very recognizable that people can live. Every single day when they walk through your doors. And so we changed ours.

how they want to achieve it, [: 00:30:00

That's a good thing. That's a place that I want to work. And the cool thing about it is we took that word why and we put it at our main entrances, right? And This was a mission statement that was originally generated for our staff, but what ended up happening was students, visitors, they'd walk in and they'd see that word.

Why there? And they'd ask the question. Why? Why is the word? Why there? And what ended up happening was our staff, then. Took that mission, took that vision and started sharing it with students, with visitors, with parents. And and really we created that mindset just by chance amongst a whole bunch of other stakeholders, right?

So now our students know, Hey, when they see why they know, that means what is my purpose? How am I going to achieve it? And that I get to make that decision every single day. One of the biggest things that we learned is man, making that mission and vision statement.

Simple to the point has been key for us here in the Elmwood School District.

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In rural organizations that might be listening to this conversation. What are the key things that they should be pulling out from this conversation that they can apply in their environments? What do you feel are the key things that they should be pulling out of this conversation that's going to help them achieve similar results in their organizations?

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I do lunch supervision every single day. I also eat my lunch in the cafeteria with our junior high kids and some of our elementary kiddos on a daily basis. I'm involved in co curriculars and extracurriculars. I supervise every home event. And I'm pretty much at every [00:32:00] away event because typically one of my own kids is playing in it, right?

But I also do a ton of coaching. In fact, I'm Finishing up my last year of coaching baseball because my son's going to graduate. Next year might be the first year in 20, 25 or 26 years that I'm not actually coaching. But I'll still be, at the activities and watching. And so I think number one you just, you gotta be visible.

You gotta be out there in a small rural district. Everybody wears a lot of hats. But I'm a believer that your leader has got to be the, they got to be the ones that are wearing the most hats. And so you can't be afraid to jump in. We all probably are jumping in and subbing in classrooms.

body needs something, you're [: 00:33:00

You're going to get bogged down real quick. So you gotta figure out a way to make sure that you're watching out for yourself. And I use one simple phrase. Obviously you can tell with my last little comment about my why phrase, I'm a big phrase guy, but I think you need those things to just get yourself in the mental and the right mental mindset.

And for me, it's. Make it a great day. I use those five words. You received an email from me, Jim, you would have saw it on the signature. It's on every email that I send out every day. But more importantly it's something that I say and people know when I say it, that I'm not just trying to be hokey or some little statement.

They know that I mean it because to me that's the mindset that, that all of us need to have. If you just think about. Environment where people walk in every day with that mindset. Now, granted, some days are going to be harder than others. And some days we might not be successful.

for me, that's, I guess some [: 00:34:00

I think about it every morning when I walk in these doors and I do what I can to make that happen.

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[00:34:20] Rob Stewart: Yeah. They can reach me by email. You can you can give me a call at school too. I'm always available, but email is probably best. I also believe in responding within 24 hours, so I'm checking it all the time,

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When I think about this entire conversation, There are a few key things that I think are broad lessons that can be useful for anybody. You [00:35:00] mentioned one of them, which is be visible. And I think when you're looking at best practices that help you retain your talent, visibility is a key factor that should, that every leader should be taking that posture.

And how does that show up in the day to day? If you're looking at new, Folks that have joined your organization, one of the things that stood out was how hands on the onboarding process was throughout that first year and then even beyond into year two and three. So when you're looking at visibility, that's how it shows up.

You need to be hands on in that first year and in subsequent years so that your people are set up for success. The other thing from a visibility perspective that I thought was important in this conversation was how you leverage. Collaborative development. So you have a continuous improvement culture that you've built and you have continuing education practices that are embedded into your organization.

share that across the entire [: 00:36:00

Now it was designed at the student level, but I would imagine that feeds through all layers of the organization. So if you're looking at building an organization where people are sticking around. You need to be visible. You need to be hands on. You need to be collaborative, and you need to have recognition embedded as part of your day to day practices.

So those are all great lessons, and I think a lot of leaders would be well served by applying that within their organizations. For those of you have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out. Make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already joined our our community, you can find that at www engage rocket.

g us and sharing with us the [: 00:37:00