School District to meet mandated class-size reductions by hiring teachers
April 16th, 2011
A major portion of the Palm Beach County School District’s solution to meet mandated class-size reductions next year will soon take the district across the Sunshine State and to the Keystone State to fill new classes with teachers.
The district plans to hire up to 190 new elementary school teachers by the start of next school year in order to maintain an 18-student cap in core elementary classes such as English and math.
Pat Kaupe, director of recruitment and retention, said she could not say exactly when the class-size hiring blitz would begin, or how many jobs would be filled by outside teachers, because the district is required by its union contract to make those jobs available to internal candidates. Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke said the district will probably move some teachers who have not been teaching a class, such as reading coaches, back into the classroom.
Kaupe said the district is focusing its recruiting efforts not only on recent education graduates from Florida universities but also on Pennsylvania graduates. That state has a reputation for good teaching colleges and a lack of jobs for its graduates.
The district receives rsums from impending college graduates up North throughout the year, and it has been doing video interviews on the Internet using Skype with candidates too far away to interview in person, Kaupe said.
Palm Beach County’s average teacher salary, $48,537, was the ninth highest in the state last year, according to the state Department of Education. But that salary was well below large South Florida counties like Broward and Miami-Dade, as well as some smaller counties like Flagler and Okaloosa.
Though Broward County has a higher average salary, the district points out to recruits, Broward laid off 568 teachers last year. Palm Beach County School District laid off none.
Kaupe said the district, which has about 12,000 teachers this year, typically hires more than 1,000 teachers every year because of turnover and retirement, so hiring another 190 for elementary classrooms shouldn’t be an issue.
We’ll be in good shape in August, Kaupe said.
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Tags: Meet Mandated, Reductions, School District
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