With a little more than a month before the start of classes, Indian Creek High School is still looking for teachers and getting even fewer applications than in past years.
Elementary school positions that opened were filled weeks or even months ago, with school officials beginning their search at job fairs in the spring for positions they knew would come open, Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson Schools Superintendent Tim Edsell said.
The school district got 30 applicants for an open third grade position, smaller than the 100 or more they would have received years ago, but enough to find the right candidate, he said.
But for more specialized positions, such as for math and science teachers at the high school, they got as few as five to 10 applications, Edsell said.
“The teacher shortage is having an impact,” he said.
In addition to having fewer applicants, some of the people applying also don’t have the skillset or level of experience that they have seen from interested teachers in the past, he said.
“We really hope to have secured people before the start of school. This consumes our summer,” Edsell said.
The same is true in school districts across the county, with everyone dealing with the impacts of a nationwide teacher shortage. Fewer teachers are graduating from universities across the state, and teachers with more specialized experience are becoming harder to find, school officials said.
At Franklin Community High School, an open position for a computer science and business teacher was just filled after months of searching, and other positions were filled by shuffling staff, Franklin Schools Superintendent David Clendening said.
“It’s where education and the market don’t match up. People with that experience are paid way more in the private sector,” he said.
Strong candidates are still out there, but they get snatched up much more quickly since the pool of candidates is smaller, Clendening said.
That’s why local school districts started doing their hiring significantly earlier this year, officials said.
For many schools, that has paid off with positions being filled earlier, but they are still concerned about what will happen if other jobs come open as the summer comes to an end.
Greenwood schools began posting its openings in April, and now has all the open positions filled, Superintendent Kent DeKoninck said.
Two of the positions they hired for were special education teachers, which are always difficult to find, but they were able to fill both spots quickly by hiring a student teacher who had worked with them and hiring an experienced teacher from another school district, he said.
“It’s the earliest since I have been here that we got them all filled. Our candidate pool was a little stronger for us, because we started posting jobs so early,” he said.
At Clark-Pleasant schools, officials got lucky because fewer teachers left this year, but that is a trend Superintendent Patrick Spray is seeing more with teachers moving because their spouses got another job, which he credits to the better economy, he said.
The school district also began hiring earlier, with a hiring fair in April. They hired teachers for positions that weren’t open yet, but then were able to move those people into positions as teachers decided to leave or retire at the end of the school year, Spray said.
Center Grove school officials began looking for new teachers in February, with a job fair that drew in 80 applications, assistant superintendent Jack Parker said.
The school district also had fewer retirements, meaning they had fewer positions to fill, he said.
But for the positions they did have to fill, officials noticed a drop in applications from what they would have received in past years, Superintendent Richard Arkanoff said.
“It is getting tighter and tighter,” he said.
One position that doesn’t seem to be impacted is for administrators, local schools said.
Clark-Pleasant received 40 applications for a principal position at one building. And Indian Creek has received more than 40 applications for an assistant principal position that was just posted last week, Edsell said.
Those positions, especially for entry-level administrators, remain competitive, which is a good thing, Edsell said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”By the numbers” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Here is a look at the number of open positions local schools had to fill for next school year:
Center Grove;7
Clark-Pleasant;About 25
Franklin;About 5
Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson;7
[sc:pullout-text-end]
