The Great Resignation. The War for Talent. The K-12 Staffing Crisis.

Whatever you call it, K-12 school districts have a retention problem and it’s not unique to teaching staff – superintendents, principals, nurses, bus drivers, paraprofessionals, and others are departing in droves.

Between the pandemic’s disruption on student learning, overloaded schedules, and increased workloads, staff are burned out, frustrated, and leaving for enterprise roles or retiring.

Already tasked with managing a plethora of networks, devices, and applications critical to the mission of learning, IT teams have now been elevated to a strategic role, charged with driving multiple digital transformation initiatives across their districts – often with little increase in team capacity.

These challenges are not unique to K-12, which means IT leaders are in high demand in the job market. As a result, IT retention grows more challenging every year and can impact district innovation if unaddressed. Recent studies found IT workers have the lowest intent to stay in their jobs compared to all corporate functions and 7 in 10 digital leaders say their company is unable to keep pace with change due to worker shortages.

But IT teams don’t need to throw in the towel – here are four ways leveraging professional and managed technology services and/or partnering with experienced managed service providers (MSP) can mitigate challenges, reduce burnout, and improve retention:

1. A Reprieve for IT Teams

The sheer number of systems, devices, data, compliance, networks, etc., that education IT teams oversee is staggering. IT workloads were already increasing before COVID-19, but the pandemic accelerated 1:1 initiatives, leading to an explosion in connected devices needing support, networks needing optimization to handle the surge in connectivity, and systems needing protection from increasing cyberattacks. The result? Stressed and overburdened technology teams with too much on their plates and forced to ruthlessly prioritize, often resulting in day-to-day maintenance falling through the cracks.