There’s no secret that workers are hard to come by; with two percent unemployment in Marion County in the most recent data from Iowa Workforce Development, help wanted signs and advertisements are dominating the discussion.

And with the new pressures of the pandemic, in the classroom, and from political movements taking aim at schools, Pella Schools Superintendent Greg Ebeling says all administrators across the state and Midwest are finding teachers harder to come by.

The Pella Community School District employed an early retirement policy this budget year as well, which Ebeling says may help with some of the ongoing financial crunch, but hurts their staff by the amount of institutional knowledge leaving their doors and with the difficulty hiring some specific positions — especially in special education, science, and math.

Ebeling says some openings that once had closer to 60-70 applicants have closer to 20 or so — and he knows Pella Schools have many built-in advantages that smaller, rural districts don’t have, where he believes the problem is worse.