Teacher retention has come up in Cameron R-1 board meetings for at least three years. It gets mentioned. It gets discussed. And then the meeting moves on. What has never happened — not once in those three years — is a serious, specific conversation about what is actually causing teachers to leave, or what the board intends to do differently to stop it.
The problem is real. Missouri is facing a statewide teacher shortage, and Cameron is not immune. But statewide trends do not explain everything. Districts with similar demographics and similar budgets manage to retain staff at higher rates. The difference, more often than not, comes down to workplace culture, administrative leadership, and whether employees feel heard and supported.
On those fronts, Cameron has reason to be concerned.
What One Candidate Said
In response to a questionnaire I recently distributed to candidates in the April 2026 Cameron R-1 board election, I asked each candidate directly: teacher retention is a serious issue in Cameron and across the state — how can Cameron resolve it? You can read the full responses from all participating candidates here.
Dan Kercher, a candidate who previously served on the Cameron school board, offered this answer: acknowledge that the issue exists statewide, and then “simply point out the good parts of what we have.”
That is not a plan. That is a press release.
Teachers are educated professionals. Most hold bachelor’s degrees at minimum; many hold master’s degrees or higher. They are trained to observe, evaluate, and think critically. If Cameron R-1 were genuinely a great place to work, those professionals would not need a board member to point it out to them. They would already know it. They would tell their colleagues at other districts. Word would spread, and Cameron would have no shortage of qualified applicants eager to come here.
The fact that retention remains a persistent problem is itself the answer to Kercher’s suggestion. They can see what Cameron has. They are choosing to leave anyway.
Pointing out the good parts does not address why teachers are leaving. It does not identify what is driving turnover. It does not create any mechanism for the board to learn what employees actually experience inside the district. And it does nothing to change whatever conditions are making people choose to work somewhere else.
What makes Kercher’s answer particularly notable is that he served on this board for six years. Retention was a problem during that time. If the solution were simply to promote the district’s strengths, that approach had ample opportunity to work. It did not.
Blaming the Messenger
Board members have, on occasion, pointed to me as a contributing factor in Cameron’s staffing difficulties. I will note for the record: I am not a school administrator. I do not set workplace policy. I do not conduct employee evaluations. I do not determine whether staff feel supported, respected, or fairly compensated. What I do is report on what the district does — and what it fails to do.
If the argument is that my reporting makes Cameron a less attractive place to work, that argument has the causation reversed. The reporting exists because of conditions inside the district. Addressing me does not address those conditions. And the only concrete action the board has ever taken in response to me is a ban from district property. No retention plan. No policy changes. No structured outreach to staff. A ban. If the board genuinely believes that banning a journalist solves a teacher retention problem, that belief tells you something important about how seriously they are taking the problem.
The Exit Interview Problem
To my understanding — and the district is not going to confirm this for me — exit interviews for departing staff are currently conducted by the superintendent. I understand the practice. What concerns me is who is conducting them and what happens to the information afterward.
The board of education in Cameron operates at significant distance from day-to-day district operations. Board members communicate through the superintendent, not directly with building administrators or staff. That means any information the board receives about why employees are leaving has passed through at least one set of hands before they hear it — and sometimes two.
There is a documented pattern in this district of the superintendent failing to bring critical information to the board. I have previously reported on a specific incident in which board members stated publicly that they had not been informed of a serious matter that occurred more than a year prior. The superintendent had not told them. That pattern of incomplete disclosure is directly relevant to any conversation about exit interviews, because it raises a legitimate question: if he withholds information about serious incidents, is it reasonable to assume he is fully and accurately conveying what departing employees say about his leadership or his administration’s culture?
There is a second problem beyond what the superintendent chooses to share. Consider the building principal who conducts an exit interview and learns that a teacher is leaving because they believe that principal is a poor leader or creates a hostile environment. That principal then reports the findings to the superintendent. Is there any realistic expectation that the principal will volunteer that information accurately? Their professional evaluation and advancement prospects are tied to their relationship with the superintendent. Self-interest makes honest reporting unlikely.
The current system filters every piece of honest feedback through the people most likely to be the subject of it. That is not an oversight. It is a structural failure.
There is also the question of whether employees would even raise concerns in a superintendent-conducted exit interview in the first place. If a teacher has spent years feeling unsupported by district administration and has no reason to believe that reporting it will lead to any change, why would they say so on the way out the door? The interview becomes a formality. A box checked. And the board never learns anything useful.
A Different Approach
If the Cameron R-1 board of education genuinely wants to understand and address teacher retention, the solution is straightforward: cut out the middleman.
There are seven board members. They could rotate exit interview responsibilities, with one member sitting down with each departing employee. Once a month, whatever was learned gets presented to the full board in executive session. The board then has unfiltered, firsthand information — not a summary produced by the person whose leadership may be under scrutiny.
From there, the board can direct the superintendent or specific administrators to make changes and create measurable benchmarks to verify those changes are being implemented. They can track whether the interventions are working. They can hold administrators accountable by name if the problems continue.
This approach also protects the employees. Departing staff information remains shielded under Missouri’s Sunshine Law. But more importantly, it creates conditions where employees might actually be honest. Telling a school board member why you are leaving is a different conversation than telling the superintendent. The power dynamic is different. The incentive to soften criticism is different.
Once the board completes an exit interview, they can still inform the superintendent of relevant takeaways. Information still flows to administration — it just starts at the board level instead of ending there.
Don’t Wait for the Exit Interview
But exit interviews are, by definition, reactive. They capture information from people who have already decided to leave. A board serious about retention should not wait until staff are on their way out the door to ask how things are going. Board members should be conducting routine, scheduled meetings with randomly selected staff members throughout the year — informal conversations designed to take the temperature of the workforce before frustration reaches the point of no return. Not performance reviews. Not disciplinary matters. Simply: how are you doing, what is working, what is not, what would make this a better place to work? If the board hears the same complaint from three different teachers in three different buildings, that is a pattern worth acting on — before those teachers become exit interviews.
Why This Matters Beyond Cameron
Every school district in Missouri is dealing with some version of the retention problem. Most of them are responding the same way Cameron has: acknowledging the issue, referencing statewide trends, and waiting for conditions to improve on their own.
A district that actually solves it — that actively learns from every departure, changes what needs to change, and builds a culture where good teachers choose to stay — will stand out. Word travels in education communities. Teachers talk to other teachers. A district with a genuine reputation for treating its staff well and listening to their concerns will attract people who are frustrated somewhere else. That is not a pipe dream. It is what happens when institutions take accountability seriously instead of performing it.
The Board Has the Power to Act
The current board’s approach has been largely deferential. Trust the professionals. Let the superintendent handle it. The problem with that philosophy, in a district with this particular history, is that it produces exactly the outcome we have seen: three years of concern, no measurable improvement, and a board that cannot tell you with any confidence why teachers are actually leaving.
The April 2026 election offers an opportunity to change that. Voters should be asking candidates not whether they appreciate teachers, but whether they are willing to do the uncomfortable work of finding out what is driving them away — and whether they are willing to hold the right people accountable when they find out.
Pointing out the good parts is not an answer to that question.
Heath Gilbert is an independent investigative journalist covering Cameron R-1 School District. He publishes at Cameron School District Exposed and Breach Holder on Substack.