Each year districts across America experience a teacher shortage when staffing their schools. The State of Texas reported a projected shortage of 37,134 teachers while our Region 4 Educational Service Center reported a shortage of 4,492 teachers for the 2018-19 school year. 

Projections close to those numbers are expected again for the 2019-20 school year. Each year Fort Bend ISD experiences the impact of this issue.

In an effort to address the shortfall of available teachers, the FBISD Department of Human Resources has established an aggressive Recruitment Strategy to Grow Our Own through succession planning, Build Strong Partnerships with universities, and be a District of Innovation.

Although having a competitive salary can help our efforts to attract and retain top talent, it is not the only factor.

Capturing all recruiting and retention data at the district and campus level is a critical component. Analyzing ongoing data such as our teacher vacancies and being nimble with our findings is key to our success.

Actions have included:

• Establishing a partnership with Teacher for America and placing these teachers at Title I schools.
• Applying and being awarded a state grant to create a teaching career pathway for students in our district as well as funding support for non-certified paraprofessionals and substitutes to become certified teachers.
• Partnering with an Alternative Teacher Certification program to pipeline non-educator professionals into a teaching career.
• Creating innovative programs such as Educators Dedicated to Growing Excellence (EDGE) and the Early Literacy Center (ELC) allowing for a scalable staffing/teaching model.

Fort Bend ISD Human Resources staff monitor teacher vacancies District wide throughout the year, and has worked to improve monitoring and data analysis.

• The HR department has completed PeopleSoft system enhancements to allow for “real-time” vacancy reporting through a Personnel Count Report (PCR). This system update changed the way HR and the Department of School Leadership (DSL) are able to stay informed about campus vacancies and how to best respond.
• The Department of School Leadership, Human Resources, and Campus Principals work very closely together to target recruiting efforts to fill teacher vacancies.

The data below provides a snapshot of teacher vacancies at the beginning of the school year and at the start of the second semester for 2018-19.

Data Set 1 indicates no disparity in teacher vacancies between Title I (yellow highlight) and Non-Title I schools.

The Fort Bend Independent School District has implemented targeted and innovative strategies to address teacher vacancies and ensure that students receive effective instruction from certified personnel.  

The District’s inclusive approach takes into consideration the varied skills available within and outside of the district by including the recruitment and training substitute teachers, compensation of certified teachers currently employed in the district, and the use of virtual certified staff to meet student needs.

First, the District has implemented a Substitute Teacher Incentive Plan designed to reward substitute who fill vacancies on campuses that meet one of the following criteria:

• Title I funded due to free and reduced lunch enrollment
• State Accountability designation of Improvement Required
• Hard to fill vacancies due to location or specialized instructional programs

Certified and Non-Certified substitutes with assignments in these settings have the opportunity to earn significant financial incentives aligned with attendance and performance. Next, the District has also implemented procedures to provide classroom teachers with supplemental pay for classroom coverage. Although participation in this program is voluntary, all teachers are eligible to earn supplemental compensation to address classroom absences. Finally, Proximity Learning’s virtual learning platform, which pairs a certified virtual teacher with a “live” paraprofessional, is under consideration to fill vacancies and deliver instruction for students in grades K-12.  All Proximity Learning teachers are certified in the state of Texas and are able to use the District’s instructional delivery platform to plan instruction, collaborate with campus peers, and conference with parents and guardians. 

• Although the minimum state requirement for a substitute teacher is a high school diploma, FBISD prefers substitutes hold a bachelor’s degree and requires all substitutes to have a minimum of 60 college hours.
• An incentive is offered to certified substitute teachers when serving in a long term substitute assignment. This has resulted in a 30% certified long term substitute fill rate for the 2018-19 school year.

Data Set 2 illustrates an equitable placement of both certified and non-certified substitutes among our Title I (yellow highlight) and Non-Title I schools.