Central Florida seeking nearly 100 teachers
Central Florida school districts are still seeking to hire nearly 100 teachers, more than a month after classes started.
They attribute the vacancies to stiff competition for candidates, high numbers of retiring teachers and growing student enrollment.
Orange County reported 62 unfilled teaching positions on Thursday, while Lake County had 22 and Seminole County had11. Administrators in all three districts say it has been a challenging year for hiring teachers, particularly in areas such as math, science and exceptional student education.
“It’s taken a lot longer this year,” said Quiana Peterson, Lake school district’s instructional recruitment partner. “There seem to be fewer candidates.”
School districts in other regions of the state, including South Florida and Tampa Bay, have reported similar struggles, saidMark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union.
Growing student enrollment has contributed to the scramble to findmore teachers, he said.
But Florida’s political climate — including a meritpay lawthat ties evaluations to student test-score data — also has made the state “unwelcoming” to teachers, Pudlow said, prompting many to leave.
“You’re seeing a lot of experienced teachers moving on to other districts [in other states] and other professions,” he added.
A national study released lastweekwarned of a looming teacher shortage brought on by increasing public school enrollment, decreasing numbers of college students pursuing teaching careers and high rates of attrition among teachers who have grown dissatisfied with their jobs.
The study by the Learning Policy Institute said states and districts need to fix the “leaky bucket” of teacher attrition by improving teacher working conditions if they want their jobs filled with qualified instructors.
In Orange, hiring has become more competitive as the private industry snatches up more potential teachers, said Bridget Williams, the district’s chief of staff.
The school district also needs more teachers, Williams said, because it opened three new campuses this year and had to replace 338 teachers and other instructional employees who retired during the past school year.
But she said the number of openings represent a small percentage of the district’s teaching force of 13,800, and her staff is “working extremely hard” to fill vacancies. More than 400 people have signed up to attend a teacher job fair Saturday at Edgewater High School in Orlando.
And to accommodate larger than expected enrollment at some schools, Orange will transfer 38 teachers between campuses.
In addition to the 62 vacancies, 31 Orange teachers are inthe hiring process and should be in classrooms soon. The district generally places an instructional coach or a substitute into classes without permanent teachers.
Orange has a few more openings than in the past. Last year, it had about 49 at this time. A few schools now list multiple openings. Lee Middle School in College Park, for example, listed eight openings on the district’s website. Dream Lake Elementary inApopka and Oak Ridge High School in south Orlando had five vacancies apiece.
In Lake, the district opened this school year with fewer teacher vacancies than last year — 20 compared with 35 — but then found it harder to staff those jobs, particularly openings for middle and high school math teachers, Peterson said.
This year, as in years past, math is a “critical teacher shortage area” in Florida.