School district is still short 39 teachers

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Members of the county public school board want to know why teachers leave here each year.

The Gallup-McKinley County School Board have asked that copies of the past three years of exit surveys be given to them at the next school board meeting on July 7.

School officials said that exit surveys for this year are still being reviewed but should be ready by then.

The district each year asks teachers who have resigned to fill out a questionnaire which asks the reasons why, as well as what they liked or didn’t like about working in the district.

Not all teachers each year fill out the survey but in the past resigning teachers have given reasons ranging from wanting to live closer to family to not liking the way the district was run.

This comes as the district is trying to replace some 85 teachers for the coming school year.

Theresa Mariano, assistant superintendent for personnel, said Thursday that the district still has 39 teaching positions to fill, which means the district is more than half way to filling this year’s slots. The unofficial deadline is July 29 — that’s when the district begins holding orientation sessions for new teachers to the district.

That’s somewhat impressive since budget cuts have forced the district to cut back to 11 the number of job fairs recruiters have been able to attend this past year.

But to make up for it, the district held its fourth recruiting fair at Miyamura High School on June 10, attracting 84 people who expressed an interest in working for the district this coming school year. Forty of these were hired and Mariano said the district is still interviewing some of the others about possible jobs.

“This fair keeps getting better and better each year,” she said.

About 60 percent of the new teachers hired so far are just out of college but the district is also seeing some experienced teachers looking at taking jobs in this area.

Part of the reasons for this, said Superintendent Ray Arsenault, may be because of higher gasoline prices.

This district is already competitive a far as salaries but there are some districts whereby the teachers have to travel long distances from their homes to their jobs that working in a small town like Gallup or one of the smaller county communities would save them a lot in transportation costs and thereby make working here seem to be more attractive.

Another thing that is different here than in many other districts, said Arsenault, is that McKinley County is more lenient in considering experience.

A school district like Albuquerque may be looking at hiring a teacher with two years of high school experience and eight years of teaching in an elementary school. So when the teacher applies for a high school position, he would only be credited with the two years he has of high school experience and none for the rest of his experience.

Gallup, on the other hand, would credit him with all 10 years. And since a teacher makes about a thousand dollars extra for each year of experience, that teacher would be looking at getting several thousand dollars more than if they went to the other district.

Like all school districts throughout the country, the hardest kind of teachers to hire are those in special education and math. The district currently has eight openings in special education alone but Mariano said she is optimistic the district will find them.

As of Thursday, only one principal position remains unfilled and that’s for the elementary school in Navajo, N.M.
Arsenault said that because of its location within Navajo country he is hoping to find a Navajo to fill the position but this all depends on qualifications.