Yuma schools have mixed success finding qualified staff

As most of the Yuma area’s schools wrap up their first month, some are doing better than others at finding enough fully certified teachers for their classrooms.

According to a statewide survey, three of every four teacher vacancies school districts reported at the beginning of the 201819 school year are still unfilled.

This results in larger class sizes, classes led by teachers who aren’t fully certified, and some that are canceled altogether.

Gadsden Elementary School District Superintendent Ray Aguilera said he doesn’t expect many more fully qualified teachers to come looking for a job until next summer.

“Because by this time most of the certified teachers are taken, and the raises

came too late to impact much movement,” he said, referring to the teacher pay increases passed by the state Legislature in May.

He added, “If there’s a little movement, it’s teachers taking jobs in California, because there they can make $25,000 to $30,000 more than they make in Yuma County.”

The Gadsden district has about 10 to 15 “longterm” substitutes teaching in classrooms, substitute teachers who have met the qualifications needed for subbing, but are not pursuing any more training that could lead to certification.

Another 30 or so of the district’s teachers are in the classroom with an emergency teaching certificate or as an intern, seeking a graduate-level education degree through a college program. Both are pathways that could lead to them being fully certified, if they can handle the coursework on top of a teaching job.

Rosy Ballesteros, the district’s human resources director, said there were 11 student teachers last year who were interns through Grand Canyon University, and another six from Northern Arizona University.

“That’s growing our own,” she said.

Aguilera said the district began its program with GCU three years ago, and its early adoption of the program has given Gadsden an edge.

“We had some become certified in August, we have a bunch becoming certified in January, some more are being certified in May. It’s just a continuous pipeline for new teachers for us that we didn’t used to have. And these are all local, which means they’re not going to go to another state, things of that nature,” he said.

He added, “Eventually we’ll end up producing teachers for other parts of the county that we can’t hire.”

Yuma Elementary School District No. 1 Human Resources Director Luciano Munoz said of 420 teaching positions, six are currently filled by long-term substitutes and about 30 more by people with emergency teaching certificates from the states.

These one-year certificates are given to people with a college degree in the subject area they would be teaching, and can be renewed two more times, for a total of three years to meet state certification requirements. If they haven’t qualified by then, they must either stop teaching or get into the two-year intern program.

Munoz said the district encourages these teachers to earn their credentials as quickly as possible, and employing them on a contract with full benefits helps to attract people to that path.

Long-term or “emergency” substitutes do not get benefits with their jobs and could be displaced if a more qualified candidate turns up. “We have those positions posted throughout the year, although we have some long-term subs who are quite capable of being in those classrooms and really are doing a phenomenal job in their role,” he said.

Some of those six subs are themselves pursuing education courses at Arizona Western College or other higher-education sources, Munoz added. “We love that we’re able to grow our own, in that regard,” he said.

“Growing your own” is a theme with local districts due to the difficulty of drawing teachers from farther away, something the Yuma Union High School District knows all too well.

Wanda Ellis, its human resources director, said San Luis High School has the most vacancies. “(For) Yuma as a whole, it’s hard to get people here, because most people don’t know where Yuma is. When you talk about it at job fairs they’re like, ‘What’s a Yuma?’ So then (for) San Luis, we have the added burden of where is that within Yuma?”

“I guess a lot of people see that as not in town, and that makes it harder, for some reason,” she added.

She said about one-fifth of the 500 teaching positions are currently vacant. Most of the classes they would teach are led instead by a emergency teacher or sub, or else a full-time, fully certified teacher who picks up another class on their planning period.

That number is improving, she said. “We have 100 teachers who were using their planning periods to cover 15 openings, so that one is significantly lower. It may be if we need to create classes to cover, than we would have to ask for more.”

One of the things YUHSD is doing to attract more teachers is holding local job fairs and getting booths at community events, like the Tamale Festival in Somerton. “Sometimes, right here it’s that people don’t recognize there’s different pathways to becoming a teacher.

“So we have to do a better job of saying, if you have a college degree, you can do an internship program and become a teacher, if that’s something that you are interested in. If you are someone who has a career, CTE has many pathways that you can get a teaching certificate.”