TULSA— The Tulsa Public School District is once again facing its annual summer crunch for hiring. The district has fewer positions to fill than in years past, but the number of applicants is way down.
This year, the district had 100 fewer positions to fill because those openings were eliminated as part of the budgeting process. The district needs to fill 71 total full and part time positions by the first day of school. But district leaders say the number of applications has declined by 330 since this time last year.
Bradley Eddy is the Director of Teacher Talent for the district. He says it’s unclear exactly why the number of applicants is so low this year.
"It's a little added pressure this year because as you know we had a little budget issue earlier on and I think that made people believe that there would be no hiring….we do know that Oklahoma is not one of the higher-paying states but we've had that to contend with for many years, I don't know that's any different than what it was last year,” Eddy said.
The deadline to have applications in and have teachers finish the required paperwork to be hired in time to start the school year is July 15th.
Meanwhile at Tuesday’s school board meeting, a presentation explained some changes to the behavior response plan— which dictates how students are punished and for how long. The district performed a study a couple of years ago that showed minority students were being suspended at higher rate than other students. District leaders say in some cases minority students were being suspended for truancy issues that were sometimes out of the student’s control.
Changes to how suspensions are doled out and why resulted in students getting 10,000 additional instructional days compared to a year ago.
“Instead of excluding students from school through suspensions, particularly long-term suspensions, we found different means of addressing the behaviors. We either reduce the amount of suspension or found alternatives to suspension and again that resulted in us recouping 10,000 days of instructional time which is incredibly important for our students,” said Tulsa Public School Chief of Staff Paula Shannon.
As for the hiring issues, the goal is to have all 71 spots filled by the first day of classes. The district is holding a job fair with on the spot interviews for potential teachers Thursday July 7 from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. at the Wilson Teaching and Learning Center.
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