Santa Fe Public Faculties will host second job honest to rent academics | Training
With school just a day away, Santa Fe Public Schools are still looking for educators – mostly people who have never been to the classroom.
Officials admit they have not been able to hire enough teachers to fill all of the county’s classrooms and will host another job fair on Aug. 11 in hopes of finding college-educated adults interested in teach while they work for an alternate license.
The district has made some progress over the past few weeks. It had 60 vacancies at the end of July, but has yet to fill 34 apprenticeships. The school year 2021/22 starts on Friday.
The district’s website has nearly 260 vacancies, many of them for auxiliaries and special education teachers. There may be some pending offers for these positions, said Howard Oechsner, the district’s human resources director.
At the job fair at the end of July, the district submitted almost a dozen job offers to student teachers and graduates, said Oechsner.
Of those who have accepted their offers, two are already at work.
As the district works to fill in the gaps, it is not yet known how many substitute teachers will be running the classrooms when the school opens.
The administrators are still reviewing school enrollment trends and may transfer some teachers to schools with higher needs.
Oechsner said school principals could encourage teachers to renew their contracts by “selling” their prep time to the district to teach additional classes.
The difficulty of finding teachers means that some students start the year with one teacher and end with another.
The district will also host another job fair on August 17 to recruit new members for its transportation staff.
“We are probably looking for bus drivers most importantly right now,” he said.
Other counties in the state are also having difficulty filling vacancies. Albuquerque Public Schools were looking to fill hundreds of apprenticeships ahead of the county’s first day of school next Wednesday, according to the county’s website.
District spokeswoman Monica Armenta said in an interview on Wednesday that staffing needs are “at the same level” as they normally are as the school year approaches. She added that the urge to find teachers early in the year has persisted for decades.
Dorothy Chavez, senior director of Employee Processes, said the district will not hold any more job fairs for the upcoming school year – but will endeavor to hold quarterly fairs in the future.
Albuquerque schools will also be reaching out to substitute teachers and prep teachers to fill in gaps at the start of the school year.
New Mexico State University researchers will be releasing an updated report on vacant teaching and staffing positions in public schools across the state next month. The university’s Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation & Policy Center conducts a survey of vacancies each year.
Last year’s results showed that the state had 889 vacancies in September 2020 – most of the apprenticeship positions in elementary and special schools.
