With the start of school just days away, Wake has nearly 1,000 vacant jobs to fill
The Wake County school system is trying to fill 999 vacant positions — including teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and instructional assistants — before the school year starts Monday for most students.
Wake County school officials reported Tuesday that they have 206 teaching vacancies — a 1.7% vacancy rate. That’s considered to be normal for this time of year.
But vacancy rates are more than 10% for bus drivers, teacher assistants and cafeteria workers, leading to hundreds of positions that need to be filled.
“We are a few days away from the start of the school year,” AJ Muttillo, Wake’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said Tuesday. “To say that every vacancy would be filled by the time traditional schools start next week is not reasonable. We will continue to do our best in filling those vacancies.”
Wake has around 160,000 students and 20,000 employees. It’s the largest school district in North Carolina.
The vacancies come even as Wake has offered a $3,500 bonus for new special-education teachers and $1,200 bonuses for new bus drivers and teacher assistants. Wake is facing increasing competition from other school districts that are also offering bonuses to fill their vacancies.
Hiring during pandemic
Wake and other school systems are trying to fill vacancies in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rules such as requiring face masks to be worn in school are still in place.
“We’re now entering our third school year impacted by the pandemic,” Muttillo said. “Teachers have been tremendous, but they also have been tired. They’ve had to pivot a lot, reevaluate some priorities.”
Muttillo said teacher resignations are slightly up from prior years. But he said the numbers have stayed pretty similar.
Megan Longley, a third-grade teacher at Yates Mill Elementary School in Raleigh, is among the new teachers Wake has hired. Longley grew up in Wake County and recently graduated from UNC-Wilmington.
“I did not envision a global pandemic in my first year of teaching,” Longley said. “But teaching, everyone said, you have to be super flexible, and so I’m ready to get in the classroom and make things work for my kids.”
Teaching vacancies across the state
In Wake, Muttillo said the vacancy rate for general education teachers is 1.5%. It’s 5.3% for special-education teachers and 18.5% for the Virtual Academy.
Drew Cook, assistant superintendent for academics, cited the high vacancy rate as a reason why the district isn’t accepting more Virtual Academy students even though families want in due to the surge in COVID cases.
Students will get substitute teachers until vacant positions are filled.
Finding enough teachers is both a statewide and national problem.
On Friday, the North Carolina Association of Educators held a rally outside the legislative building calling on lawmakers to do more to deal with the state’s teacher vacancy problem, particularly in rural counties.
Both the state House and Senate have each passed budget plans that lawmakers say will help improve education, The News & Observer previously reported. But NCAE said the budget plans fall short of providing enough state funding to ensure students have a licensed teacher instead of a substitute.
“As students go back to school, our students are more likely to be trying to learn and master these subjects with a teacher who is not qualified to teach these subjects.” Kristin Beller, president of Wake NCAE said Friday. “That is a shame. That is a problem that could be avoided.”
Driver shortage affects buses
The new recruitment bonus has helped attract more drivers, according to Wake. But the district still has 138 vacant driver positions for a 16.9% vacancy rate.
“The challenge of finding bus drivers is not a new one, maybe one that’s a bit more highlighted and heightened during the pandemic,” Muttillo said.
More than half of Wake’s bus routes will be double runs, meaning drivers will take two different groups of students to and from the same school. Enough time has to be built in to allow drivers to drop off the first group and to do the second run before school starts.
Wake says this will result in morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times being delayed by about 10 minutes.
Wake has had to dramatically increase the number of double runs in recent years due to the lack of drivers.
Major shortage in cafeteria workers
Wake’s highest vacancy rate is among child nutrition workers at 27.3%. The district has 228 vacancies out of 796 positions.
“That’s a great example of a group that has had to adjust a lot over the past 18 months,” Muttillo said.
At a time when schools were operating virtually, Muttillo said cafeteria workers were on the front lines serving meals to students and families. When schools reopened, they served meals on campus.
Due to the shortage, menu offerings will be limited until more workers are hired. Curbside meal service may also be reduced.
This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 12:55 PM.
