ABSTRACT
As staffing shortages become a reality, this chapter explores how collaborative thinking of special education leaders can improve efforts in these areas. Finding partners, both expected and unexpected, who can help attract candidates can lead us to creative solutions that we would not otherwise have thought of. This does not mean that the work is easy; in fact, the need for time and effort in this area seems to be increasing. The chapter offers a perspective to move us from viewing this as an impossible scenario to one that we can solve creatively with effort and partnerships. Similarly, we need to address this need with efforts to retain our current quality staff in the hopes that we have fewer jobs to fill. Several focus areas for staff retention are noted with examples to consider.
