DEER VALLEY, AZ — People looking to hire and those needing a new job filled the Deer Valley Unified School District building Saturday morning.
The district held a job fair, searching to fill more than 100 teaching positions alone and more positions for other classified staff, such as bus drivers and more.
According to the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association, as of January, there are nearly 2,900 teaching positions unfilled across the state. That’s about a 25% vacancy for certified teachers.
To help retain teachers, Governor Katie Hobbs just recently announced the members part of her new Educator Retention Task Force, a group that will work to figure out how to retain teachers in this crisis. They plan to have recommendations in a report due by the end of this year.
Amanda Wilson, who currently works for the Deer Valley Unified School District (DVUSD) as a secretary, went to the job fair hoping to become a teacher. She plans to go through the district’s Teachers Prep Program where she can gain experience as a teacher while earning her certification at the same time.
“If we have the ability to teach, we should be out there. We should be getting involved and we should be growing our future generations to be stronger individuals,” she told ABC15.
DVUSD said it’s been working to fill its vacant positions, raising starting pay for teachers to $50,000 next school year and also offering incentives for the hard-to-fill jobs.
“For some of our certified staff members, we have a hard-to-fill addenda stipend for them. Those are for those high-need classroom populations such as our science, math classrooms, special education classrooms where we’re experiencing a high shortage and having a hard time finding teachers,” said Matt Hreha, the director of human resources for DVUSD.
As districts continue to try and find new educators and staff in general, they’re hoping to make some sort of dent as one school year nears the end and another one starts in a matter of months.
