Eagle County School District pleads with homeowners to make space for teachers, school employees

Working in the resort community of Eagle, some educators and school staff are having a hard time finding a place to live. Now their boss is going to work trying to help them find a spot. 

Philip Qualman, Eagle County School District Superintendent issued 17,000 letters to people in their community, asking a simple question: "Will you let someone from our district live with you/at your property?"

Qualman was looking at the number of secondary homes that lay vacant most of the year in particular. 

"We've added 125 rental units to our inventory over the course of the last two months and, you know, a lot of them are coming in at rates that I wouldn't consider affordable, but we've added them to inventory," Qualman said. "So that helps."

Aside from the vacant homes, more permanent residents are also offering what space they have to help out. 

"We had people offering bedrooms in their homes, empty nesters," Qualman said. "We had people offering basement apartments, apartments above garages, apartments above barns. I mean, you name it, there are all kinds of configurations offered."

He explained not having rooms for staff creates normal issues, like overpopulated classrooms with fewer educators. But it goes beyond that, too. 

"We also have fewer bus drivers. We have fewer custodians. We have fewer cooks, fewer mechanics, fewer educators," Qualman listed. "So just about every category of employee that you can consider, we are short."

He said he has been forced to look for creative solutions to what he said was a failing on the state level to fund K-12 schools statewide looking down the barrel of deteriorating educational experiences for students. like dropping travel sports and field trips. 

"We're going to have to start cutting some major programs and activities for our kids. Class sizes are going to balloon. We're not going to get any educators to come to the state."

So CBS News Colorado Mountain Newsroom reporter Spencer Wilson asked the obvious question: is this a question of pay? Would paying Eagle School District staff more solve this issue?

"That's a huge step in the right direction for sure. But I think we have to look at the whole funding model of K-12 in Colorado," Qualman said. "We try to be competitive in our salary, and I think we're in the top 10 of 178 districts in the state right now with a starting salary of $47,160."

"We do everything we can every year to try to increase that and be competitive, but Colorado compared to the other 50 states, is absolutely last. We are 50th in the ability to pay a competitive wage to educators compared to individuals who have similar educational backgrounds," Qualman said.

That leads to educators leaving for better pay or lifestyles than ESD can offer. Qualman has his sights set on the big fish, funding from the state. 

"My main point would be that the housing issue shouldn't be the main story," Qualman said, interviewing about an employee housing issue story.

"I know that it's an interesting hook because nobody has reached out to their community like we did, but that's an externality. All those other problems that I've listed, you know, those are all rooted in the fact that Colorado does not fund its K-12 schools. So we've got to address that issue, and I don't want that to get lost in looking at one creative housing solution."