Quote:
Originally Posted by hiddengem
I'm a school employee that got my layoff notice this week. It's going into savings to supplement the unemployment until I can find a new job.  |
Come to Houston!!!!! I just read an article about Houston ISD was working hard at trying to acquire teachers being laid off in Cali
Texas looking west for teachers
Houston and other districts hope to attract educators losing California jobs
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Recruiters from school systems across Texas are heading west to hire some of the 14,000 teachers who have received pink slips in California, a state facing a $4.8 billion shortfall in education funding.
Leaders of the Houston, Aldine and Fort Worth districts are among those taking out newspaper ads, renting billboards and hosting job fairs in California for hard-to-fill positions, including bilingual, math and science teachers.
"We're constantly on the lookout. We keep track of where they're laying off teachers," said Gloria Cavazos, assistant superintendent of human resources in Aldine, which is about to place employment ads in some California newspapers.
It's tradition for recruiters to prey on the weak. When Aldine caught wind that Puerto Rico was laying off teachers last year, for example, officials packed their bags and returned from the island with about 10 teachers.
This year, their sights are set on California.
Even though recruiting season is almost over, Cavazos said she'll head to California if the district's newspaper ads generate enough response from science and math teachers. It'll be one of the last of the 100 or so recruiting trips Aldine officials make this year to fill nearly 600 teaching openings.
California morale low
Cavazos said they sell out-of-state teachers on Houston's low housing prices and cost of living. A starting teacher's salary of between $40,000 and $50,000 goes further in Texas than it would on the West Coast, she tells candidates.
It may not take much to persuade some California teachers to pack their bags. They're frustrated by job instability, inadequate wages and low per-pupil spending, union leaders said.
"The morale's terrible," said Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association. "And teachers are having to make decisions now on whether to relocate. They don't have the luxury of waiting around to the summer to find out if they can feed their family."
While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won't announce his final budget for several weeks, state law requires districts to issue pink slips by mid-March to any teachers in danger of being cut.
With other states aggressively recruiting in California, Wells said he's worried that the ramifications for the state could be devastating, especially considering the teaching shortages expected across the nation as baby boomers retire. In addition, the threat of cuts will likely discourage bright students from pursuing teaching careers.
Picking up the castoffs
Texas is happy to pick up the castoffs, said Richard Kouri, spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association. The state's colleges and alternative certification programs produce only about half the 30,000 to 45,000 new teachers Texas needs each year, he said. An additional 50,000 classrooms are staffed with teachers who lack the credentials to handle the subject matter, he said.
"Texas is an importer of teachers. They have been for the last decade and they probably will be for the next decade," Kouri said.
Fort Worth casts lure
By coincidence, the Fort Worth school district opted to put up two billboards recruiting teachers in San Diego last month. It was part of a new $180,000 effort to attract educators from areas with student demographics similar to Fort Worth's, including Detroit and Gainesville, Fla., district spokesman Clint Bond said.
Because of the layoffs, Fort Worth has already received 21 applications and two dozen calls from California. That's second only to the 32 applications they've gotten from El Paso.
Fort Worth touts a starting salary of $47,500, plus stipends for hard-to-fill jobs and an incentive of up to $20,000 for teachers who help turn around certain struggling schools, Bond said.
"The only thing we don't have that San Diego has is an ocean," he joked, adding that recruiters are headed to California in mid-May for interviews.
Bea Garza, head of human resources for the state's largest school district, said Houston ISD is also in the process of placing newspaper ads and will be recruiting in California in the next few weeks.
"We're packing our bags," said Garza, who said she has about 1,200 teaching jobs to fill. She characterized the district's turnover rate of about 10 percent as average.
Gayle Fallon, head of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she won't be making any sales pitches on behalf of HISD — especially given that the district expects to lay off about 10 teachers of its own this year.
She resents the out-of-state recruitment effort.
"That's the real irony. I have teachers being given layoff notices," she said. "It's frightening that (HISD) can't keep teachers. We spend a fortune recruiting. We spend a fortune training them. We get them to Houston, they're treated horribly and they leave."
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