Crane seeks to fill 18 open positions
School dist. holds job fair to attract candidates
Potential new-hires flocked to Pueblo Elementary School’s library Tuesday for Crane School District’s job fair.
As school approaches, the district still has 18 job openings for a variety of positions. A number of them are teaching positions, though many are also in other areas.
Where help is most needed, though, is in Crane’s special education department, according to Director of Human Resources Lupe Lewis.
“So we’ve got a speechlanguage pathologist; speech-language pathologist assistant; a school psychologist; a COTA, which is a certified occupational therapy assistant and an occupational therapist (position open),” said Lewis.
These positions are also pretty difficult to fill, said Lewis, given the higher educational barrier and lack of qualified candidates in the area.
“People that do have those qualifications probably already have a position in some other organization either in health care or… in a school district,” said Lewis.
This issue isn’t unique to Crane, or even the field of education. A lack of qualified candidates and the remoteness of Yuma make it difficult for a number of organizations to attract new talent.
Something that helps ease this issue, though, is Arizona’s status as a state that allows emergency teacher certifications, meaning that a candidate can begin teaching immediately with only a bachelor’s degree. They are, however, required to get certification within three years of being hired.
Arizona is one of a small number of states that allow this, and it can help districts get prospective
teachers into the classroom quicker at a time when hiring qualified educators is increasingly difficult.
Another factor that Lewis said has helped Crane’s human resources department attract more applicants is steadily increasing pay in the district.
In April of this year, the district’s governing board voted to give a 6.25% pay raise to all staff, excluding minimum wage employees, who will get a bump up to $12 per hour in January of 2012 due to Proposition 206.
Pay for teachers within the district has risen 18% since the 2017-2018 school year and the widespread teacher strikes that came with it.
“We are more competitive with our teaching salaries,” said Lewis. “They’re not where we would like them to be yet, but they are helping.”
Lewis said that 73 people registered ahead of time for the job fair, and it wasn’t long after it started that Pueblo’s library was bustling with candidates being interviewed.
There was no lack of talent to sift through, and in previous years the summer fair has had great results, according to Thomas Fletcher, Ronald Reagan Fundamental School’s principal who was at Pueblo Tuesday interviewing.
“In the past, I’ve gotten one or two teachers usually, and they’re fabulous teachers,” he said. “In fact, this last year, one of them was the teacher of the year for first-year teachers at our school.”
And, Fletcher said, prior experience in education isn’t a deal-breaker. Instead, he likes to focus on finding someone with the right attitude.
“One of the things I look for is a candidate that is enthusiastic, has high energy, likes kids, has the heart for kids (and) wants to help kids,” he said. “We’ll teach them how to teach. If they don’t know how to teach, we’ll teach them how to teach, but they have to have a heart for kids.”
Lewis said that she looks for people who really want “to be in education. Either if they’re starting in their career, or they’re already in their career.”
And often the district will work with students that are working toward graduating from college.
“We have a good pathway for them to just transition right into the classroom when they graduate,” Lewis said.
Gina Guerrero, who was at the job fair Tuesday, is one of those students. She said that she’s currently in Arizona State University’s secondary education
program and came to the fair to look for a substitute teacher position.
She had also already worked as a student teacher in the fall of 2018, and came back because she enjoyed her time at Crane.
“I’m looking to have more experience in the classroom,” she said. “So that when I get to my teaching year, which is my last semester of the two-year program... I have more experience.”
Crane is still accepting applications. To find out what positions are still open, visit bit.ly/2JnWkGa.