EDUCATION As school year begins, Leander ISD navigates 142 campus, 320 noncampus vacant positions
BREAKDOWN OF VACANCIES As of Aug. 18, Leander ISD had a total of 142 campus vacancies and 320 noncampus vacancies. Here is a breakdown of where the district is seeing most of its vacancies.
BY ZACHARIA WASHINGTON
Considering the number of vacancies, the district has managed to ll in the holes, Eggeling said. Although district data shows 23 general education teacher vacancies, she said the district is only actively working to ll 10 of them. Most positions have been covered by utilizing current sta and securing long-term substitutes. Others are not being lled at this time due to low enrollment, according to district documents. Additionally, the district has 34 special education teacher openings, a factor Eggeling said has “put a strain on the system.” While actively working to ll all of these positions, the department has devel- oped an interim plan to meet students’ needs. Noncampus vacancies—which include positions in transportation, special programs, custodial services and child nutrition—were at 402 in July, but that number decreased to 320 by mid-August. Substitute teachers are also an “area of concern,” Eggeling said at the July 21 board meeting. As of Aug. 18, the district had 627 available substitute teachers. LISD’s goal was to have a pool of 750 substitutes by the rst day of school. “We have made great gains before students showed up, and we’ll continue to work to ll those vacancies that are remaining,” Eggeling said. District o cials said they are continuing to make progress toward lling the remaining vacancies. The district is actively recruiting teachers and sta through university certi cation programs; paying employees to receive a bachelor’s degree in education with federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funds; the “Grow Your Own” teacher pipeline program; and the spirit exchange program, an international pro- gram that brings in teachers from other countries. Additionally, the board approved a 5% salary increase at midpoint for teachers, nurses and counselors, a 4% increase at midpoint for all other eligible sta and a $15 minimum hourly rate in May in an eort to retain existing sta.
As of Aug. 18—the day after students returned to campus for the rst day of the 2022-23 school year— Leander ISD had a total of 142 vacancies across campuses, 69 of which were teacher positions. The district has been working since July to ll as many positions as possible before the rst day of school, district o cials said. “Our HR department is working very hard to make sure that we get to be as close to fully staed as we can before the school year starts,” Superin- tendent Bruce Gearing said in a July 19 interview. “This is going to be a more challenging year than it has been in the past. We lost more teachers this year than we have before, and so we have more positions that we have to ll.” Although LISD was not able to ll all positions before the start of the school year, the number of vacancies, both campus and noncampus, has decreased since July. At the July 21 board meeting, the district reported 208 campus vacancies with 95 of those being teacher positions. More teachers are resigning in the rst ve years of being with the district due to a number of rea- sons, including dissatisfaction with the profession and leaving the profession altogether, according to LISD’s teacher turnover data. A recent survey from the Texas State Teachers Association shows that 70% of teachers were “seri- ously considering” quitting their job, which is a noticeable increase from 53% of teachers reportedly considering leaving the profession in 2018. Before the 2021-22 school year, roughly 11.5% of teachers quit their jobs in the Texas public school system, according to a Texas Education Agency report. This is the highest rate since the TEA began collecting annual data in the 2007-08 school year. Chief Human Resources O cer Karie Lynn Eggeling said sta is working diligently with the teaching and learning department for solutions on retaining teachers in the rst ve years.
CAMPUS VACANCIES
TEACHER
69 Total
Special education: 34
General: 23 Support: 12
Instructional assistants: 59 OTHER CAMPUS STAFF
73 Total
Administration: 7
Oce sta: 4
Support professionals: 3
TOTAL CAMPUS VACANCIES: 142
NONCAMPUS VACANCIES
Child nutrition services: 96
Custodial services: 83 Transportation: 61 Other noncampus departments: 37 Plant services: 23 Special programs: 20
320 Total
SOURCE: LEANDER ISDCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
“[We’re] making sure that we can put the high- est-quality educators in our system, in the right positions, to make sure that we can meet the needs of each and every individual student in our sys- tem,” Gearing said. “Both attracting those quality educators and then keeping them in the system and paying them adequately is going to be one of the most signi cant challenges that we have.”
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