Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has fewer employee vacancies overall so far this year compared to last. However, officials are concerned about the level of staffing needs in the exceptional children department.
As of Tuesday morning, the district reported roughly 70 classroom teacher vacancies — an improvement from 112 at this time last year.
But Chief Human Resources Officer Christopher Weikart says 25 of those unfilled positions are for exceptional children (EC) teachers. There are also 32 vacancies for EC teacher assistants.
“These are very concerning," Weikart said. "We have to serve all of our children in all areas.”
Weikert says district staff will be reaching out to retired EC educators to see if they’d like to come back to work. For now, substitutes are filling in for the exceptional children TAs, but they don’t have the specialized training that the job requires.
“We're going to continue just to have to beat the pavement looking for folks. We don't have a specific, like compensation plan or anything like that, you know, for EC teacher assistants," Weikart said. "However, I think our best course of action — or a very good course — is just we have to get the word out there from our staff saying, ‘Hey, this is a great place to work.’”
Some school board members, like Vice Chair Alex Bohannon, noted that the district may need to consider pay raises in order to recruit and retain these positions. Right now teacher assistants are paid the same rate across the board, EC or not.
“I'm aware that there are budget implications to those types of decisions. I just wondered if, preliminarily, there had been any type of discussion," Bohannon said. "Because I guess at some point it becomes, to me, a question of, 'What do we need to do to be serious about recruiting?'”
A district job posting lists the salary for a full-time EC teacher assistant at around $2,600 a month, for 10 months.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.
Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.