NATCHEZ — Interim Superintendent Fred Butcher has made it his summer goal to improve the teacher-staffing situation that plagued the Natchez-Adams School District last year and worsened this year.

Included in Butcher’s plans is a special meeting of the school board to address the situation by offering positions to up to 20 people. The meeting will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Braden School.

The school district has 60 staff positions unfilled. While the applicants do not have to accept, Butcher said he hopes this round will put a dent in a battle he plans to fight all summer.

“Hiring certified teachers is my No. 1 priority,” he said.

This summer, Butcher plans to have the district hit the recruiting trail. The district will be looking for summer graduates from universities in both Louisiana and Mississippi, especially from Alcorn State University, he said.

District employees will also contact other districts to find people who are leaving, go through old files to see if there is someone qualified who was overlooked and reach out to teachers who have been lost under previous administrations.

Butcher said the Mississippi Legislature’s recent passage of House Bill 207 — which provides additional monies to National Board Certified Teachers if they work in high-need counties — also gave the district an advantage in attracting those teachers.

The pilot program approved by the governor provides an additional $4,000 stipend to NBCTs working in 13 high-need counties, including Adams. NBCTs are already receiving a $6,000 stipend from the state.

Butcher said the district has 11 National Board Certified Teachers now.

“You have to go through a rigorous training program and testing process to become a National Board Certified Teacher,” he said. “The process takes 12 to 18 months.”

Butcher also plans to form a relationship with the Teach for America program to bring its teachers to Natchez. The Concordia Parish School District, where Butcher previously worked, has utilized the organization, and he said they produce excellent teachers.

“Teach for America is a good place to get science, math and foreign language teachers — often they come speaking the foreign language as their first language,” Butcher said. “Science and math teachers are difficult to attract because we are competing with industry and business. They pay so much more than we can.”

While Butcher wouldn’t say which schools were the most impacted by the staffing shortage, he said Robert Lewis Magnet School and Natchez High School are both close to being fully staffed.