Two Rooms, One Job, 1,200 Résumés
This is how scarce elementary school teaching jobs are on Long Island: The Wainscott School District, which plans to hire one teacher, has received more than 1,200 résumés from candidates near and far.
Stuart Rachlin, the district superintendent, published the job opening on the Internet on March 22 and in local newspapers during the second and third weeks of April. Since then, more than 1,100 hopefuls have responded online and about 100 sent in applications by mail. The opening originates with the coming retirement of one of Wainscott’s two full-time teachers.
The influx has prompted Mr. Rachlin to form a hiring committee to help sort through the résumés and develop criteria by which the candidates can be screened and ranked. “Otherwise, it’s just an untenable situation,” Mr. Rachlin said during a meeting of the school board last week.
Mr. Rachlin, who already has reviewed some 500 applications, said that so far the candidate pool “has not been with the same kind of rigor or experience” he has seen in the past. “A lot of candidates have a year of being a teaching assistant, but any experienced teacher is holding on to his or her job,” he said.
According to Julie Lutz, the chief operating officer of the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, “for elementary openings, I would say that the market is pretty flooded.” She noted that in the past four years more than 4,000 school positions had been eliminated in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, resulting in 2,180 layoffs.
As of Tuesday, the Online Application System for Educators, a statewide BOCES-run job database, listed just 292 openings in Long Island schools, with 57 elementary openings. “It’s a climate where you can really pick and choose the best of the best,” Ms. Lutz said.
Last year, the neighboring Sagaponack School District, which employs one part-time and two full-time teachers, needed a head teacher. Alan Van Cott, Sagaponack’s superintendent, said the district received more than 600 résumés.
The person Wainscott eventually hires will teach a combined second and third-grade class. The job posting states that the district is seeking someone “with experience in small-group instruction or a multi-grade classroom.” The district also hopes to find a candidate who speaks Spanish.
Another hiring challenge, Mr. Rachlin said, is a state requirement that new teachers work with one who is more senior on such tasks as lesson plans. Since the Wainscott School has only two full-time teachers, such mentoring could require occasionally hiring a substitute, he said.
David Eagan, president of the Wainscott School Board, said last week he is optimistic about the search for a new teacher.“This is a sought-after job, and I think we’re going to end up with a fabulous candidate,” he said.