A month into the fall semester, Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) is still dealing with staffing vacancies in instructional and non-instructional positions.
The district currently has 49 instructional vacancies, including 27 classroom teachers, according to ACPS spokesperson Jackie Johnson.
Over the summer, the school district lost over 100 instructional staff members, mostly to resignations, though 16 did retire, according to personnel lists showing employee movements.
These numbers include non-classroom instructional staff, such as counselors and media specialists, and it is notable that about a third of the retired teachers are now employed at The Frazer School, a new private school that focuses on competitive academics.
Almost 60 ACPS paraprofessionals also either resigned or retired over the summer.
Within the first week of school, the staffing shortage was affecting families.
One mother, who asked to remain anonymous, said she found out at “Meet the Teacher” that her son did not have a fourth-grade teacher yet, as the school that normally requires six teachers for the grade, only had two. She said parents were told the students would all rotate through the two teachers on staff.
Johnson said the ACPS is mainly dealing with teacher shortages by hiring long-term substitutes, though district staff is also providing support and working through the Educational Support System to recruit more applicants. Many full-time teachers have also been placed in out-of-field teaching assignments, according to the personnel lists.
Exceptional Student Education, or ESE, has 11 positions listed on the district’s job posting website, and 21 of 47 paraprofessional positions listed are in the “Instructional, ESE” category. Of the paraprofessionals who resigned over the summer, seven were employed at the Sidney Lanier Center, mostly for ESE.
Many schools also welcomed new administrators this fall, after the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) approved a shuffling of principals and assistant principals in June.
A new strategic plan for ACPS, which the school board has partly approved, names teacher recruitment and retention as one of the district’s top priorities for the next three years, with increased stakeholder engagement, more data and job satisfaction surveys among the “key measures” to reach that goal.
At the first SBAC meeting after the start of the school year, however, the hot topic in public comment was not new administrations or a staffing shortage. It was the elimination of courtesy busing for students who live within a two-mile “walk zone” of their schools.
The transportation shift took effect in January and has improved the efficiency of ACPS’s busing during a driver shortage. Last fall, some students’ buses got them to school hours late, or never arrived. Now, Johnson said all bus routes have been covered since the start of the school year, though the district is always looking for more drivers, bus aides and other staff.
The district has continued courtesy busing at seven School Improvement (SI) schools, including those which were rated SI last year but have since pulled their grades up.
“As was the case after the change was made in January, the district continues to review and address concerns by parents about their students’ walk to school,” Johnson wrote in an email.
Anyone interested in applying for a job with ACPS can look on the website at www.sbac.edu.
“…all bus routes have been covered since the start of the school year.” Yet busses are still late 30+ minutes or don’t show up at all out on the Westside of the county not sure how the rest of the county is doing , but they are failing out this way and pretending that everything is covered and running smoothly.
Newberry Elementary currently has 25-27 students in each of the Kindergarten classes. State limit is 18 children. Even hiring one extra teacher, which there seems to be no space for, will not rectify this! Then you have at least 15 children being stung by wasps last week on the playground because the grass is too tall. The new principal hasn’t even bothered to email the parents this school year. Completely unimpressed!
Any notion why the shortage exists? Could it be because of the salaries we offer? Or maybe it’s because of how the profession has been demonized by a certain cohort? Or maybe it’s both?
Maybe it’s because of GRU and the insane cost to live here?
Any organization that prioritizes employee retention must have a robust system of exit interviews. Until you clearly understand WHY an employee is choosing to leave, you can’t formulate strategies encouraging them to stay. While SBAC is not unique in this regard, the results are more visible. The Board should be seeing a detailed analysis every June of why each employee left or was not retained.
Greetings. This email is just to remind the writers of this daily news that not everyone knows the acronyms like ACPS, SBAC and GNV. It is very difficult to read a newspaper – especially if you are a new reader – to know exactly what these acronyms stand for. A new person in a new city or community might just give up reading because of their confusion.
Hi Karen, we always spell out the entire name first before going to the acronym for the remainder of the story. So you will find Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) in the first reference, but then we will refer to them as ACPS for the remainder of the story.
Unfortunately, recently retired teachers who would be willing to serve as substitute teachers are required to wait until six months after retirement to be allowed to substitute.
I like how the board claims they want to improve employee retention, but they’re refusing to give teachers a raise. The union has been fighting for it for months now, and the board doesn’t want to go above 1.9%, and they’re refusing retro pay.