Smaller budgets and fewer trips. Critical shortages of math, science, and bilingual teachers. Higher expectations for new teachers.
These are just a few of the challenges Texas school HR administrators face as they hit the road for their annual recruiting trips. While most will have less hiring to do than normal, they’ll still have to be on their toes to find the teachers they need.
Not much has changed in terms of what recruiters will look for. One thing that has changed is that districts are now more apt to look within to try to fill critical open positions.
This is a year when recruiters will be very selective about their trips. “We have very specific goals. We’re not just going recruiting to go recruiting,” said Rick Rodriguez, Lubbock ISD’s new assistant superintendent for Human Resources. “We’ll cut some overnight trips and trips we always send someone to because they have connections but that aren’t producing. They aren’t necessary this year,” Rodriguez said.
Even though Alief ISD hasn’t cut its recruiting budget, its HR administrators are very conscious of confining spending to trips that yield results. “You have to look at your trips and try to forecast where you can find a teacher,” said Walter Simmons, director of human resources, Alief ISD. “There’s less of an opportunity to experiment with a new place because you want make sure there’s a visible result from your work. You tend to put that on the back burner for years ahead when things are better,” Simmons noted.
The recruiters we spoke with won’t be accumulating too many frequent flier miles this spring. Lubbock hasn’t done out-of-state recruiting in the past and is unlikely to start this year given the budgetary constraints the district faces. Rodriguez has recruited out of state for other districts, though, and has some ideas about where he’d go if he were looking for teachers beyond Texas’ borders. “If I could take one trip it would be to Michigan because they have more teachers than they need,” Rodriguez said. The problem is that trip would cost the district in the neighborhood of $1,000. “It goes back to the fact that I can drive to San Angelo or Abilene and try to see as many teachers as I can for a lot less,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also recommends a couple of other out-of-state recruiting locations: Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, UT, and the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in Greeley, CO. BYU has an enormous foreign-language program that produces plenty of Spanish, French, and bilingual teachers. UNC has an abundance of math and science teachers, many eager to move to a warm-weather state.
Alief ISD will be going on out-of-state recruiting trips this year but won’t go as many places. The district’s recruiters are bound for Nebraska, Nashville, TN, and Oregon in search of standout teachers in all subjects—not just teachers in critical shortage areas. The district will also make one trip to Mexico to a job fair where it has found bilingual teachers in the past.
Texas recruiters that do make out-of-state trips are often at an advantage when the talk turns to pay. “Teachers make a decent salary, particularly in light of the cost of living here. Teachers from out of state can earn thousands more than they would at home,” Rodriguez added. (See “Texas teachers see healthy pay raises in 2009” for an up-to-date report on teacher salaries.)
One special challenge for Texas recruiters is finding out-of-state teachers who are willing to take on more than just teaching. Many Texas districts are asking teachers to participate in professional learning communities (PLCs). PLC teachers have to share their work with their more-experienced peers, a potentially intimidating job requirement, especially for a new teacher. “Other warm-weather states that might be attractive to new teachers (for example, Louisiana, Florida, and Arizona) aren’t doing anything like that,” Rodriguez said.
“When you’re looking at what’s expected of a teacher now compared to even five years ago, there’s an enormous amount of pressure because of higher student performance goals,” Rodriguez said. “The good thing is all Texas districts are doing it, but it’s making it harder to get teachers from out of state interested.”
Virtually all Texas districts need to hire math, science, and bilingual teachers. Most would like to increase their diversity by hiring more minority teachers. And overall, most will hire fewer teachers this year than in the past, so recruiters will target the Texas colleges, universities, and providers that are most likely to produce the teachers in the certification areas they need.
Simmons notes that ACPs play an increasingly important role in filling teaching vacancies in critical shortage areas, particularly secondary math and science vacancies and elementary bilingual vacancies. “Here in the Houston area, there were school districts that wouldn’t hire ACP candidates. I’m not aware of many, if any, that are still making that statement,” Simmons said.
In terms of minority recruiting, virtually every district has a goal to hire more minority teachers but the pool of candidates is not growing. Recruiters will travel to the same locations as in past years—Texas A&M University–Kingsville, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, the University of Texas (UT)–Brownsville, UT–Pan American, and UT–El Paso—in search of minority teachers. With so much demand, districts aren’t likely to be able to hire enough minority teachers to meet their diversity goals.
One new development is that HR administrators are recruiting in-house for some critical shortage area positions, looking at their own teachers first when they have difficult-to-fill positions. “Districts are looking at their existing staff to see who might be able to become certified in a new area. In the past, if a teacher wanted to pursue a new certification area, he or she paid the cost. Now districts are paying the cost of everything from preparation courses to the actual certification exam,” Rodriguez observed. “HR administrators are asking teachers what they can do to help [them get certified in a new area] because it’s much cheaper to reassign someone than to recruit and hire a critical shortage area teacher.”
This year’s circumstances—higher-than-normal teacher retention rates, targeted recruiting, and retraining of existing staff—do not bode well for the many newly certified graduates and career changers seeking teaching jobs. The weakened economy has resulted in plenty of both.
Rodriguez estimates that Lubbock will hire between 75 and 100 teachers this year, about half of the number hired last year. Alief administrators also anticipate fewer vacancies, but Simmons thinks the number of new hires won’t be too far off from last year. “Those who plan to retire or move away will do those things, so it quite possibly could be a wash,” Simmons said.
A lethargic teacher job market has not diminished the number of applicants. In addition to recent graduates, Alief’s applicant pool is overflowing with adults who were laid off and saw teaching as a relatively stable option for a second career. News reports have lauded this trend as a potential boon for school districts, bringing new, talented people with real-world experience to classrooms. Simmons is somewhat less enthusiastic. “You’re getting so many more applicants now, but that doesn’t mean the quality is better. It just means you have to sift through more applications to find the people you need,” Simmons said.
Teachers with Elementary (EC-4) certification likely face the toughest competition in the job market because of their high numbers overall. Simmons notes that ACPs are now producing a fair number of teachers in that certification area, rendering districts “a bit oversaturated with the number of applicants we’re seeing.”
Because recruiting budgets are so tight, with district leaders scrutinizing every penny spent, the question had to be asked: why recruit at all? Can’t districts just hire new teachers this year from the applicants they have (assuming they have enough to fill even their hard-to-fill jobs)? It comes down to relationships.
“You’ve got to maintain a relationship with the universities because when you work with the teacher preparation staff and help them out, they will recommend you and put you in contact with their teachers,” Rodriguez said. “Developing those relationships and keeping them up is key. That said, we can’t go everywhere and empty out our budget to maintain relationships.”
You also have to go to build relationships with another important group of people: future teachers, and not just those you want to hire immediately. “You have to do something to keep yourself out there in front of the university people and the career service office people and the freshman and sophomore students,” Simmons said. “It’s an out of sight, out of mind thing.”
Being visible to the job seekers of the future is critical because the 2010 job market may not bear any resemblance to the 2011 or 2012 job market. “There’s a cycle to all this. There’s less hiring now, but once the economy changes, there will be people who leave,” Simmons said. “If you miss two or three years at a particular location, they may not look for you again. I say that realizing there has to be a balance. You cannot go places just to put yourself in front of people every year,” Simmons said.
