07-02-2025
Prior Lake Savage Area Schools staff shortage worsened by COVID surge
COVID-19 case rates continue to dominate Prior Lake-Savage Area School board meetings as school officials provided yet another Safe Learning Plan update during Monday's meeting.
Health Services Coordinator Kate Keil, along with Jim Quiram, director of human resources, presented the district's current COVID-19 situation to school board members.
'During the beginning of the school year we experienced a spike in November … and as the rates were going down in December, we were hopeful but experienced a large surge in January,' said Keil. 'Our preliminary data suggests that the rates are going down by quite a large rate almost dropping 100 per 10,000, so, we are hopeful that the rate will continue to decrease.'
Superintendent Teri Staloch added that in November, cases rose from 50 to 102 and according to Keil, the district saw a large surge after winter break seeing up to 500 cases in just two weeks. For this reason, the district decided to resort to distance learning.
'Currently cases are decreasing in students but they remain highly elevated in staff,' said Staloch. 'Just a reminder, as you all know, but the reason that we did have to go to distance learning was because of staff absences and being unable to fill those positions – and we did just return from distance learning just two weeks ago.'
During the presentation, Quiram detailed staffing problems that PLSAS and districts throughout the state currently face.
'Some positive news is that our open positions are leveling off. However, the concern there is that we're still at 60 (open positions) and almost all of them are support staff – including paras, custodians and food service,' said Quiram. 'That's been pretty consistent.'
Quiram said overall, daily staff absences are going down but substitute teacher positions need to be filled.
'I would say one of the things that we watch on a regular basis is how many unfilled absences we have,' said Quiram. 'Last week we averaged about 70 absences per day pretty regularly throughout the week. On Friday, we had 95 and we had 27 unfilled teaching sub positions which is very difficult to be able to handle when you think about all the other open support positions that don't have people working as well.'
Staloch went into more detail with school board members regarding the district's staffing shortage and what they're doing to encourage educators and service industry personnel to apply.
'As you know, employers throughout the state continue to struggle with staffing shortages and our district is no exception to that,' said Staloch. 'There are currently 60 full-time and part-time positions open with a range of opportunities including paraprofessionals, custodial maintenance, child nutrition services and substitutes topping the most needed positions.'
Staloch said for those interested in applying, visit the district's website at and click 'Join Our Team.'
