Fort Worth school districts are getting creative to recruit enough teachers. Here’s how.
On a late March morning, Ryan Catala stood in a busy conference room, chatting up anyone who stopped by his table for a moment.
All around him, others were trying to find the same thing Catala said he needed most: “Dynamic, engaging teachers.”
Catala, the principal at Riverside Middle School in the Fort Worth Independent School District, was one of dozens of recruiters at a job fair for recent graduates or soon-to-be graduates at the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Education. On every side of him were recruiters from other districts across North Texas. Across the room, others from the Los Angeles Unified School District had set up a table, looking to draw from the same pool of teaching candidates as everyone else.
By mid-morning, Catala had given a letter of intent to a secondary English teacher he said would be a good fit in Fort Worth. He also had a few other promising leads, he said. Although there were several high-quality candidates at the job fair, Catala acknowledged that the district couldn’t afford to be as choosy as it has in the past.
“If you’re certified, then I’ll have you,” Catala said.
In Texas and across the country, the number of graduates coming out of four-year colleges of education has been declining for years. With fewer certified teachers to go around, school districts in North Texas have had to rethink their recruiting strategies to make sure they have enough teachers to fill their classrooms.
Texas’ teacher shortage predates COVID-19 pandemic
Although job stresses and labor shortages associated with the pandemic exacerbated the situation, the number of graduates coming out of U.S. teacher colleges has been declining for more than a decade, research shows. In a report released last year, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education found that the number of students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in education declined by 22% between the 2005-06 school year and the 2018-19 school year. At the same time, the number of students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees of any kind climbed by 29%, according to the report.
In Texas, the number of graduates coming out of four-year teacher colleges has been dwindling for years, according to the Texas Education Agency. At the same time, career changers who get their teaching certificates through alternative certification programs make up a growing share of the state’s teacher workforce. But Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers last year that teachers who come through those programs are more likely to leave the profession after only a few years.
Raúl Peña, chief talent officer for Fort Worth ISD, said the district recently hired a team of recruiters who go to job fairs across Texas and Oklahoma to find candidates for positions in the district. Those recruiters have allowed the district to cover more ground and boost its social media presence targeting recent graduates with teaching certificates, he said.
That team has also streamlined the hiring process for principals, he said. Recruiters collect resumes from interested applicants at job fairs, then bring them back and go through them, weeding out any that have already been hired by another district before passing them along to principals, he said. Before, principals did that work themselves, Peña said, in addition to all the other responsibilities that go along with running a school.
“It’s like they’ve been rummaging through clothes trying to find their size,” he said.
Matthew Anderson was one of the job hunters at the UT Arlington hiring fair. Anderson, a native of Arlington, will graduate in May with a degree in special education — a perennial area of need for school districts across the country. That being the case, he got a lot of attention from recruiters, he said.
“That’s what everybody keeps saying — ‘Boy, do I have a job for you!’” he said.
Anderson said he didn’t see much variation in the level of pay offered from one district to the next. But there are other intriguing perks that some districts offer, like subsidized child care and a clinic for teachers and their children. Anderson said he was surprised to hear about those benefits, but walked away feeling as though he would be willing to accept the contract that paid one or two thousand dollars less per year if it meant having subsidized child care and a clinic where he could take his son when he was sick.
Smaller Fort Worth area districts must compete with bigger neighbors
On the morning after the UT Arlington job fair, Pascal Licciardi, principal of REACH High School and TRUCE Learning Center in the Castleberry Independent School District, sat at a table at a teacher hiring event at Texas Christian University. Although it was Licciardi’s first time representing the district at a job fair, he’d heard colleagues describe the TCU event as “more anemic than in past years,” he said.
As a small district sitting close to several much bigger districts, Castleberry has to work harder to sell itself to teaching candidates who may have offers from several other schools in the area, Licciardi said. When job hunters came by to talk, he told them about the support that new teachers get from the district, including a mentorship program and a training pipeline that would help them grow as educators. District leaders have also been more active on social media platforms, presenting Castleberry’s story to anyone who might consider a career as a teacher there, he said.
At another table nearby, principals from the Aledo Independent School District waited to talk to candidates. Tanner Holmes, principal of Coder Elementary School, said the district has generally started its recruiting process earlier as the number of candidates coming out of universities in the area has dwindled. In years past, the hiring season began in April, he said. Now, the district generally starts that process in February or March.
Like Castleberry, Aledo ISD is a fairly small district in close proximity to much larger districts. That can sometimes create a challenge for attracting candidates, Holmes said. Although the town is only about a half hour’s drive from downtown Fort Worth, many potential candidates think of it as an outlying country town, he said. Many others haven’t heard of it at all, he said. That puts Aledo at a disadvantage behind some of its neighbors, he said — recruiters from Fort Worth ISD don’t have to spend much time explaining where Fort Worth is.
The district is scheduled to hold its second-ever job fair on April 15. When the district held its own job fair for the first time last year, it gave principals an opportunity to interview candidates on site and begin pulling them through the hiring process, said Carolyn Ansley, principal of Daniel Ninth Grade Campus. Having that time to devote to interviewing and hiring is helpful for principals, she said, because it means they don’t have to balance it against their day-to-day responsibilities, which generally slows the process down.
Crowley ISD gets out front with teacher contracts
Pamela Berry, chief of human capital management in the Crowley Independent School District, said the district has been more proactive about making contact with colleges of education in an effort to recruit teachers in areas it needs most. District leaders have focused especially on teacher colleges in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, she said, because the transition for students coming out of those colleges would be easier than for graduates of schools farther afield.
Berry said the district has also added a VIP period to its job fair, during which district leaders invite job candidates who have already completed their coursework and are ready to hire on the spot to meet with principals an hour before the regular job fair begins.
The district is also being more aggressive about offering contracts to candidates at other job fairs its recruiters visit, Berry said. That wasn’t common before about two years ago, she said. but with fewer teaching candidates to go around, those hiring events have become more competitive, she said. At most tables, recruiters are constantly on the phone with their HR managers or superintendents to get the green light to offer a contract to a future teacher. Because so many districts are vying for the same group of teachers, recruiters know that they can’t let a promising candidate walk away, or they’ll most likely be gone for good.
“When you leave our table, you may go four tables down and get a better offer,” Berry said. “So we’re trying to lock you in while you’re standing there.”
