RCS holding event to recruit teachers

The event will be held at Rome Middle School Jan. 27, from 9 a.m. to noon.

Rome City Schools will hold a recruitment event Jan. 27, with the aim of recruiting teachers and paraprofessionals, said Gina Byars, the human resources coordinator.

The event will be held at Rome Middle School, starting at 9 a.m. and will run until noon. This is the third year the system has held an event like this, and it has previously drawn around 175 to 200 applicants.

There is no pre-registration required. Applicants are asked to bring a one-page resume for the human resources department to keep on file and additional copies to hand out to administrators from each of the schools they will be interviewing with, Gina Byars said.

At recruitment events at area colleges, the school system is just one of many represented, Gina Byars said. And when some applicants talk with a Rome representative, often with her, they may not necessarily be interested in working there.

However, by holding its own recruitment event, the system knows that those attending have serious interest in working in Rome.

Principals and, in some cases, assistant principals from each school will be in attendance to interview applicants. Representatives of fields like special education or the Georgia Teacher Alternative Preparation Program will also be in attendance.

Applicants should be prepared as if they were going into an interview, not just dropping off a resume, Gina Byars said.

Superintendent Lou Byars said the system has previously hired applicants directly from the recruitment day.

Even if they aren’t hired on immediately, Gina Byars said applicants can still get their foot in the door, possibly as a paraprofessional or substitute teacher. This allows for them to work in a school and further establish a relationship with a principal and showcase their strengths, she added.

The system already has a good idea of how many positions the system needs to fill for next year, based on retirements and some teachers announcing they won’t be back, Lou Byars said. The number of anticipated hires is at 18 for elementary schools, he added, and looking back at the last five years, hiring 10 to 20 elementary school teachers has been the range of vacancies.

Though this often doesn’t happen, according to Lou Byars, the system can hire an additional teacher beyond what the need is. So, if right now the need is for three math teachers at the middle and high schools but only two end up leaving, the third new teacher can be brought on, to add an additional class to reduce class sizes, he said.

This gives the system a quality teacher when they are available, Lou Byars said.