Clark County shortfall of teachers improving

The Clark County School District has reduced its teacher shortage by more than half in one month's time by recruiting in Midwest cities that have laid off teachers or that have an abundance of unemployed teachers.

The school system was short 545 teachers as of Thursday, which is a dramatic improvement from June when it was short more than 1,100 teachers. The district's greatest shortages are for secondary math and special-education instructors.

Byron Green, director of recruitment for the district, said recruiters are snatching teachers from Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Buffalo, N.Y.

Detroit and Cleveland have recently had teachers layoffs, Green said. But the other Midwest cities offered Clark County "a surplus of teachers that want to find a teaching job," Green said.

From June 1 until the weekend of July 20, recruiters with the district will have traveled to Chicago and Buffalo twice, and had three visits in both Detroit and Cleveland, he said.

Green said the district has been recruiting six days a week during the summer. He hopes the teacher shortage can be reduced substantially by the time classes resume on Aug. 27.

"We're optimistic," Green said. "The hard work of our administrators and our human resources department is paying off." Green was referring to principals who generally work as recruiters.

The district began the 2006-07 school year short 344 teachers and had between 400 and 450 vacancies during the school year. The vacancies were filled by substitute teachers.

Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association teachers union, said the dent the district has put in its teacher shortage is a good sign, but the most important thing is for the new-hires to be labeled highly qualified under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

A teacher who is labeled highly qualified has to have at least a bachelor's degree in the subject they are teaching. During the 2006-07 school year, about 84 percent of instructors in the district teaching core subjects were labeled highly qualified.

"It's extremely important that we have a highly qualified teachers in every classroom," Holloway said. "That's essential for the education of our children."