Anchorage

In a quest for new employees, Anchorage School District and Police Department join forces

Anchorage school and police officials joined with Mayor Ethan Berkowitz Wednesday morning to announce their latest effort to fill jobs — a recruiting partnership that emerged from a brother-sister brainstorm over dinner at a local burger joint.

The Anchorage School District and the Anchorage Police Department will join at job fairs to capitalize on couples. The idea: if one half of the couple wants to be a cop and the other wants a job in schools, both can find work in Anchorage and, maybe, stick around. It's about finding people who want to "live, work and stay in Anchorage," Berkowitz said at the downtown news conference.

"For me, this is one of those exciting efforts we have where we can collaborate, where we can do more to make sure we grow our police department, make sure the school district remains healthy," Berkowitz said, standing at a lectern in City Hall with Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley and Anchorage School District Superintendent Deena Paramo.

On Tuesday, the police department had 387 sworn officers, about 44 of those still in training, according to Jennifer Castro, police spokesperson. That's still short the 400-plus officers suggested by Berkowitz when he ran for office.

At the same time, the school district was recruiting 45 teachers and 63 staff members, including carpenters, secretaries and special education teacher assistants, said Susan Schmidt, ASD's executive director of staffing and operations.

Paramo said joint recruiting will save the school district resources and money, though she didn't have a specific monetary amount. Anchorage schools spend about $157,000 a year on recruiting while the city police department budgets $36,000 for recruitment and advertising, according to staff.

Paramo said with the partnership, the district will send fewer people to events and the two organizations will also split costs, including paying for signs and booths at job fairs. She hopes that long-term, the co-recruiting will decrease turnover — a vexing problem across Alaska.

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It's unknown how effective the proposed solution will be, but at Wednesday's press conference, the staff who attended were excited. At the end of the conference, they took group photos and chanted, "ASD! APD!"

It was just about six weeks ago when the brother and sister, Schmidt of the school district and Lt. Jason Schmidt of the police department, were talking about their jobs and recruitment difficulties over dinner at Arctic Roadrunner. Jason Schmidt said that on the way home, he thought about how he often watched people's eyes glaze over as he talked with their partners about new jobs in Anchorage.

"And I'm thinking, 'What better way than to have the school district there to talk about the school system, kids, the programs they have,'" he said.

His sister said police could also talk to the school district's recruits about safety and crime in the city. The school district has a broad range of jobs to offer police officers' partners, she said, from maintenance to carpentry to food services to teaching.

Jason Schmidt said he didn't have a list of how many cops had partners working at the Anchorage School District, though through conversations with co-workers he expected it was "a high number."

Tegan Hanlon

Tegan Hanlon was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News between 2013 and 2019. She now reports for Alaska Public Media.

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