ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City Public School system is working to remedy a staff shortage. Like many other school districts across the country, staff absences and a lack of new hires are making it tough to cover classroom needs.
ACPS admits that it is going through what it calls a 'challenging recruitment year.' Currently, the schools average about 100 staff absences a day, according to school officials.
Thursday, the school board will discuss current plans on the table to bring more teachers back into the classroom. In a letter to the board, ACPS Superintendent Dr. Gregory Hutchings Jr. wrote that school leaders plan to attend 18 career fairs between February and April of 2022. That's a 40% increase over recruitment efforts last year.
"Given the global narrative around education and declining education program enrollment, the ACPS Recruitment Team is finalizing a recruitment plan that increases connections with partners and universities, commits applicants to ACPS earlier, and collaborates more strategically with school leaders as thought partners to dramatically reduce vacancy rates at the start and during the school year 2022-2023," wrote Dr. Hutchings.
The teacher shortage is something that was an issue before the pandemic but has gotten progressively worse over the last two years. Acting Chief of Human Resources, Melanie Kay-Wyatt gave WUSA9 the following statement:
ACPS continues our recruitment efforts to support our school communities in staffing areas such as substitute teachers, transportation positions and support staff. ACPS can average approximately 100 staff absences and vacancies per day. ACPS is exploring new recruitment efforts by engaging with our current pool of substitutes and communicating with our volunteer community to engage their interest in supporting our schools. We have also modified our orientation program to allow for increased access to training. We hope that these personal connections will help increase our pool of candidates. ACPS takes care of its employees and we value the roles of all staff in our school communities. We select, recruit and retain exceptional employees who exemplify the vision and goals of ACPS in meeting the educational, emotional, and social needs of the students of the City of Alexandria.
As part of its recruitment efforts, ACPS also plans to partner with HBCUs to bring in more diverse teachers. Overall, the goal is to drastically reduce the number of job openings by the start of the 2022-2023 school year.
Thursday's school board meeting starts at 6:30 p.m.
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