August 9, 2011
Districts around the state are currently hiring thousands of teachers to properly staff their classrooms just as the constitution requires.
Earlier this year, districts were anticipating a worst case scenario which never came to be. Instead, districts all across Texas do have the resources to hire teachers and they are doing just that. Districts, like the state’s largest, Houston ISD, will additionally hire back hundreds of teachers who were prematurely laid off earlier in the summer. Other districts, like Austin ISD, even have surplus money to give bonuses to teachers and maintain small class sizes.
“The resources are obviously much better than anyone would have thought, now we just need to communicate that message to the public,” said Stephaney Kennedy, Deputy Executive Director of Texas Teachers.
Although many districts are in fact going back and re-hiring some of the previously laid off teachers, they are not re-hiring all of them in order to open up some of those positions for new teachers who many consider to be better suited for the new challenges in today’s classroom.
This year’s hiring season got off to a late start due to the budget hold up, but now most districts are saying the hiring season will run much longer than normal.