Brian Hire and his wife, Jill, said they have left the Douglas County School District to teach English in Jordan because they felt they were working in a climate where teachers were not valued and their careers were uncertain.

“With so many balls in the air, we didn’t see how things were going to be settled in the right way and how this district was going to put all these things together,” said Brian Hire, who taught English at Chaparral High School for nine years.

The Hires are among 304 teachers who have left in the past year — a 42 percent increase from the previous year, according to the district.

Jill Hire, who taught English at Douglas County High School for seven years, said what helped make the decision was the ongoing bickering between the school board and the community.

The teachers who left the district include 209 who resigned for various reasons, including 39 who left to work for another metro-area district and 29 who were one-year-only teachers. Eleven were laid off, and 84 retired.

In the previous year, 213 teachers left the district, 38 of whom retired.

Douglas County School District chief human-resources officer Brian Cesare said 304 is less than 10 percent of the teachers in the district, and most metro-area districts are at or above 10 percent turnover.

“We have a lot of changes in DCSD that are rewarding them, but it’s an accountability thing and some people don’t like that,” Cesare said. “We also understand when there is change going on there is always apprehension, and people fear more than they need to.”

He said the district is trying to approach morale with communication and morale-boosting events about the changes happening in the district.

“We think a lot of it is driven by negative publicity, and communicating the facts is going to be significant,” he said.

School board president John Carson said he believes it’s a minority of teachers who are upset, that 98 percent of the teachers asked to come back this year did and that a collective bargaining agreement is unnecessary.

“We don’t need an intermediary organization; we would like to work directly with the teachers,” Carson said.

Cherie Garcia-Lewis disagrees it’s just a small number of teachers. She has a child in the district and recently started a Facebook page called Speak for DCSD, a forum for teachers to speak their minds. She said without a collective bargaining agreement, many teachers feel they can’t speak out.

“These teachers are awesome and I don’t think our district can afford to lose them,” Garcia-Lewis said. “When they’re saying ‘the big bad union,’ well, the teachers are the union.”

Jill Hire said she knows teachers who want to leave the district, but, mostly for financial reasons, cannot.

“I can’t believe my friends have to go back to work in an environment like this,” Jill Hire said. “We love to teach, we love the kids, we didn’t do it for the pay, we didn’t do it for the glory, but now people are stuck in their job.”

The Hires and Smith also complained about pay being frozen for four years. Carson said the board is always trying to find ways to increase compensation and that teachers will be involved in drafting policy decisions going forward.