Districts across Houston still looking to hire hundreds of teachers with schools set to open in coming weeks

School districts across the Houston region are trying to fill hundreds of teacher vacancies before most will be welcoming students back to classrooms in the coming weeks for the start of the year. A survey of several of the largest systems in the area shows a need for more than 1,700 educators to fill a variety of vacancies. The Houston Independent School District, the state’s largest system scheduled to kick off its year Aug. 22, had about 750 openings for certified teachers listed on its career portal Monday. Aldine ISD, which serves nearly 67,000 students and employs more than 4,000 educators, currently has 370 teacher vacancies. That number is “way up” from previous years, according to administrators, despite recruiting efforts that include signing bonuses, increased salaries and looking for applicants internationally. Klein ISD is searching for 120 teachers, according to its website. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, the state’s third-largest system, is trying to fill 472 teaching vacancies. It is a nationwide problem as low pay, long hours and the politicization of education have taken their toll on the beleaguered profession. “You look across the state and across the country, there are districts even smaller than us with even more vacancies,” HISD chief talent officer Jeremy Grant-Skinner said. “We’re all feeling the challenge together of staffing during this very unique time. We’re feeling like we’re going to get as close as we can.” More education news: Texas teachers demand higher pay, safer conditions as school shooting fears rise and staffing worsens HISD, with roughly 195,000 students and 27,000 full- and part-time employees, had about the same number of vacancies at this time a year ago, Grant-Skinner said, before reducing it to about 400 by the time schools opened. To fill those openings until certified educators could be hired, the district sent central administration staffers who held teacher certifications into classrooms. The 750 openings represent a tiny slice of the 11,000 teachers called for in the upcoming year’s budget. Grant-Skinner said there have been no conversations about doing that again this year. Since then, the district has raised teacher pay, hoping it will help recruit and retain educators. Several other districts, including Katy and Cypress-Fair ISDs, also have boosted teacher salaries. The source of shortage in Texas can be traced to a lack of dignity and respect given to educators, said Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, HISD’s largest teacher’s union. That has exacerbated issues that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about an array of new difficulties presented by remote learning and circumstances that affected students’ social and emotional well-being. “Teachers are feeling, first of all, not respected,” Anderson said. “When given the opportunity to do something different, some of them have just chosen to do something different because of the workload, low pay ... These problems, we’ve always had, but I think in some ways teachers have realized their voice and they’re using their voice to say ‘We’ve had enough’ or ‘We’re not taking it anymore.’ It’s time for the state of Texas to change its culture in our schools and what’s expected.” Educator shortage task force: TEA adds 24 teachers to task force studying educator shortages after initially having only two The statewide problem prompted Gov. Greg Abbott — who has politicized education repeatedly by repeating conservative talking points conflating LGBTQ+ literature with pornography and decrying so-called “Critical Race Theory” being taught in classrooms — to create a task force to study the issue. The group, which is expected to come up with a final report of recommendations, initially included only two teachers. To teachers’ advocates like Anderson, that alone demonstrated the extent of shortage problems in Texas. “You don’t have to form a task force to find out what’s going wrong or to find out what teachers think,” Anderson said. “Ask teachers.” Following backlash at the apparent oversight, TEA added two dozen teachers to the group. For some who have left, the decision was personal. Kendra Yarbrough-Camarena spent 18 years working at HISD, most recently teaching a government and public administration class at Wheatley High School. As the district prepares to implement a new transition program for its low-performing schools, staff at Wheatley — one of the campuses — was told they would have to reapply for their jobs, Yarbrough-Camarena said. She already had contemplated leaving the profession she called her passion. She had been through the pandemic. She had been through a transition year returning to in-person instruction. And she had missed plenty of her son’s water polo games or arrived late because of work. She wanted consistency and better pay. “I love teaching. I love education. To be honest, it’s my passion, but at a point I had to kind of come to a conclusion and say, ‘Am I going to be able to do the things that I need to do for my family’ and ‘Am I going to have the time available to do those things?’” said Yarbrough-Camarena, 43, now a director at a heavy equipment company. “Of course, returning is always going to be an option for me because it is what I love. But at this point in my life for where I’m at personally, and what’s important for me ... is making sure that I can provide for my family to ensure that my own children get access to everything that they need to reach their potential and their goals — and then having that time to spend with them, and go to those games and be at their school. That, to me, is what I personally need and is most valuable to me at this moment.” At Conroe ISD, administrators look to fill more than 70 instructional vacancies. “This is higher than in previous years, and we attribute that to growth in our district with the opening of new schools along with teacher shortages nationwide,” CISD spokesperson Sarah Blakelock said. Before school resumes, districts plan to keep recruiting. “There are all sorts of reasons that have made it more difficult than ever to recruit for positions really in any organization, but certainly in school districts and certainly among teachers,” Grant-Skinner said. “We hire every day of the year so we will continue hiring.” Jamie Swinnerton contributed to this report. alejandro.serrano@chron.com hannah.dellinger@chron.com

Districts across Houston still looking to hire hundreds of teachers with schools set to open in coming weeks

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