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Show Early retirement leads to high turnover rates for Alpine employees with their education while they work in the district because of salary benefits they derive from postgraduate post-graduate work. There were 138 applicants for these step-and-lane changes. Of these, 131 were granted with the remaining seven denied because their class or credit wasn't completed, com-pleted, more than half of the credit was in-service credit, or credit was taken before the degree was completed. com-pleted. Many teachers were also among the more than 300 applicants for the 13 administrative positions opened in the district by retirement. Price said there is often a ripple effect when administrators retire or leave their current assignment with people down the line moving up. As a result of this 33 percent of the district's present administrators are new to their positions this year. The number of educators leaving Alpine School District employment during 1987 nearly doubled the previous year's number, according . to Dale H. Price, district director of personnel. I Reporting at a recent meetingof the district i6ar6T"bfEducation, Price said the high turnover in personnel was due, in part to the i state's one-time early retirement .window which was approved by the State Legislature in February. The window allowed state and local government employees with 25 years of service to retire and collect -full benefits, regardless of age. I Prior to the early retirement option, employees had to be 65 years of age and have 30 years service in "order to retire and receive full benefits. Price said of the 265 educators who left the district during the year, 61 -;or 23.02 percent - left because of c early retirement. Normally, the district has between 10 and 15 individuals retire, he said. Other employees who left the district did so because of a variety of reasons, including other employment, em-ployment, family obligations, additional ad-ditional schooling, leave of absence, non-renewal contracts or termination, ter-mination, or health or personal problems. "The prime reason for teachers leaving the district was moving out of the area," Price said, with 92 (or 35 percent) stating this reason as their reason on their termination papers. He explained the number of employees moving from the area is high because many teachers are in the area while their spouses attend Brigham Young University. Once the spouse graduates, they move to other areas for employment. The school district's proximity to BYU helps the district in other ways, he said. While many other districts in Utah, especially those in rural areas, have difficulty attracting employees, Alpine usually can choose from the best applicants, Price said. He said 1,326 individuals applied for teaching positions in the district this year, with 216 (or 16 percent) hired. There were also 1,649 individuals apply for classified positions, with 121 (7.34 percent) hired. "We're still operating with a rather select group of people who are being hired to work in the Alpine School District. We're at a definite advantage when it comes to hiring because we're in the shadows of the great institutions that educate them," Price said. He said many of the teachers go on |