Oil town’s prosperity spurns teachers

BISMARCK, N.D. — Jobs paying $80,000 or more abound in North Dakota’s booming oil patch, but when Molly Lippert came home from college, she gladly accepted a $31,500-a-year position teaching first grade.

“I’d really like to stay in the field of study I went to college for,” said Miss Lippert, 23. “The happiness that comes with teaching outweighs the price of anything else.”

The cost of living has skyrocketed in Williston as job-seekers flock to the hub of western North Dakota’s booming oil patch. Officials say the city’s population has doubled in the past decade to some 30,000 residents and the average wage has risen from about $32,000 in 2006 to about $80,000. Pay for teachers hasn’t kept up, although they are desperately needed.

Williston expects an influx of about 1,200 students this year, bringing enrollment to about 3,800 from about 2,600 last year. School officials are hiring 52 new teachers to add to the 190 they already have. They also are adding dozens of mobile classrooms and reopening an elementary school that closed a dozen years ago when the region’s first oil boom went bust and enrollment fell.

North Dakota has risen from the nation’s ninth-leading oil producer to No. 2 in just six years, with advanced horizontal drilling techniques in the rich Bakken shale and Three Forks formations in the western part of the state. More than half of Williston’s residents now work in oil-related jobs, and the city’s unemployment rate is just 1 percent. There are some 3,000 unfilled jobs in the city.

There’s also an extreme housing shortage. Miss Lippert will be staying with her in-laws. Her husband, Nick, another recent graduate, was hired as an architect by a construction firm in Williston. The newlyweds hope to eventually buy a townhome in the city.

Others have not been so lucky. About 15 people have turned down teaching jobs because of the lack of housing or because they can’t afford to live in Williston, said Viola LaFontaine, the school superintendent. To help address the problem, the district has leased two buildings with four apartments each for single teachers. Two teachers will share each apartment, Miss LaFontaine said.

Lanny Gabbert, a high school science teacher and president of the Williston Education Association, said the salary for new teachers went up by $1,500 under the present contract. But that sum has been more than offset by the increased cost of living in Williston. Mr. Gabbert said rent for one of his fellow teachers jumped from $500 per month to $900 this year for the same apartment.

“Even with the bump in salary, technically he has less money than he did the previous year,” Mr. Gabbert said, adding that improving pay will be a top issue when bargaining for a new two-year contract starts in September.

Dakota Draper, president of the North Dakota Education Association, said teacher salaries and the lack of housing are big issues throughout the oil-producing region and have made it difficult to attract and retain teachers. He said more money will be needed for education in the oil patch, although lawmakers are still talking about “how much, where it will come from and who will pay for it.”