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Fewer schools, teachers show up at job fair
MIDLAND Several factors were blamed for a decline in attendance at the Region 18 Education Service Center’s annual job fair Thursday.
Only nine of the region’s 30 school districts were represented at the event. Region 18 instructional consultant Lucille Vaughan said districts like Andrews, Crane and Big Spring, which usually send representatives, were absent this year.
“This room was full of school districts,” she said of the 2010 job fair. “Every school district in the region was here.”
In addition to fewer school districts offering jobs, there weren’t as many candidates for teaching jobs. Vaughan said just over 100 people had applied to attend.
“Golly, last year it was close to 150,” she said.
Even though teachers have lost jobs across Texas, a result of a planned $4 billion cut in state funding to schools over the next two years, Vaughan said the number of job seekers was likely down because of a decrease in people seeking teacher certification. She said Region 18 had 78 people training for teacher certification this year, compared to 120 in 2010.
Many people don’t want to pay the $1,500 in upfront fees required for the certification program when there is a chance they won’t get a job, Vaughan said.
In the Permian Basin, some are finding other jobs while teacher hiring is slow, Cindy Fouts, Region 18 coordinator of certification services, said.
“It has a lot to do with the oilfield too,” she said. “The economy, the oilfield, the funding issue in education right now. It’s all over the state, not just our area. A lot of the people who would come in are in the oilfield.”
Still, there is hiring, particularly for teachers certified in the right subjects. Some districts are even offering bonuses for teachers in science and mathematics.
“We need some lower elementary teachers,” Victor Tarin, principal of Bessie Haynes Elementary in the Pecos-Barstow-Toyah Independent School District, said. “Colleges seem to be doing a nice job of getting teaching prospects highly qualified and certified before they look for their first job.”
Ector County ISD was represented Thursday, even though the district has announced it will eliminate more than 100 positions for the 2011-12 school year. ECISD human resources director Brian Rosson said the district was looking to hire 35 elementary level teachers and fewer than 20 for secondary schools.
“We usually average around 200 vacancies a year with retirements and resignations,” he said.
Rosson said ECISD has had an uptick in job applicants due to layoffs in other districts across Texas. But the district is moving many people from eliminated programs into teaching positions.
Along with math and science, Rosson said ECISD still wants teachers for hard to fill positions like English as a second language, special education and foreign languages.
“Early on, we felt like we would not have had any (vacancies) at this point, but here we are, still needing to fill these positions,” he said.
Despite the limited number of jobs available, Amber Papasan of Midland, a December 2010 University of Texas of the Permian Basin graduate, said she found some good contacts at Thursday’s job fair.
“I’m actually hearing that there is some hiring,” she said. “I think a lot of the smaller towns, nobody wants to move out there.”
