This is how Beaumont is filling teacher vacancies

As of Tuesday, the district had 66 certified teacher openings across its some 25 campuses, down from the almost 100 openings it had at the beginning of the school year in August.

"Approximately 20 or so of these new completed teacher hires have been brought on since the beginning of December," district Human Resources Manager Brandon Basinger said in an email. "Even with mid-year retirements, the number of teacher vacancies without candidates in the hiring process has reduced, showing that progress has indeed been made and we are in a better position going into the spring."

The district attributes the reduction in vacancies in part to its frequent attendance at in-person and virtual job fairs across Texas and neighboring states. Beaumont ISD Executive Director of Human Resources Derwin Samuels, Jr. noted at the December regular school board meeting that the district has attended 17 job fairs during this school year alone -- traveling as far as Mississippi to recruit personnel.

"We're all over the country looking for teachers," he said at the meeting.

Samuels added in an email to The Enterprise that Beaumont ISD has hired a full-time recruiter to "source new talent, continued to increase district job fair attendance across the state and (out-of-state), and worked to develop focused recruitment campaigns for all vacancies across the district."

"The teacher shortage crisis has only intensified since the challenges created by the global pandemic, necessitating new, innovative and more expansive recruitment efforts on the part of Beaumont ISD," he said. 

Basinger said new hires have been a mix of local and out-of-town/state candidates.

"We have also been exploring various ways to strengthen our partnership with Lamar University to help with their teachers nearing graduation in hopes to establish relationships with those future graduates and lead them to join our team," he said.

In June, the Beaumont ISD school board approved an approximately $3 million compensation package which included increasing starting teacher salaries to $50,000, a general $1,200 pay increase for teachers, a 2% from the midpoint raise for all other district employees and multiple stipends, among other benefits.

Based on feedback the district has received regarding the retention efforts, Basinger said he believes the added benefits approved by the board have attributed to the district's slight decrease in vacancies.

"Based on the feedback we have received, it can be confidently stated that these efforts have helped our employees to feel the value placed on their efforts and experience by the district and assisted with retention efforts," he said. "However, we do recognize the need for and are striving to do all we can regarding increasing pay to not only remain competitive, but lead in our area."

For the 2022-23 school year, Beaumont ISD had the fourth-highest starting teacher salary in Region 5, preceded by East Chambers, Port Arthur and Nederland ISDs.

But some teacher vacancies have proven harder to fill than others. More than 30% of the district's teacher openings are for special education teachers. Beaumont United High School has the highest number of such vacancies at a single campus with six open positions. 

Other subject areas with several vacancies across the district include English Language Arts/Reading and science with eight and seven openings, respectively.

"Subject area disparity in available new teachers tends to vary every few years between subject areas," Basinger said. "As a particular subject area's needs across the state grows, education students in universities are steered to those areas and after time this leads to saturation in that subject area and a demand in another area."

Basinger said science and math tend to remain "areas of need" because graduates in those subjects are often recruited into other fields, such as the petrochemical industry.

"Certainly aside from the general nationwide teacher shortage, the ebb and flow of subject area shortages definitely makes hiring for those areas more difficult and the district must remain alert to the changes in those subject area-need gaps from year to year," he said.

The district's 12 elementary schools are logging 19 teacher openings. Charlton-Pollard has three -- the largest at a single elementary campus. Amongst the district's five middle schools, there are 13 teacher openings. Vincent and Smith have the highest number, with four each. The district's three high schools have 14 teacher openings.

Beaumont United and Pietzsch-MacArthur have the largest number of overall staff vacancies, with 13 each. Both campuses have been difficult to staff, in part due to changing structures at each with Beaumont United seeing a change in administrative and athletic leadership last year and Pietzsch-MacArthur completing its two-year transition from an elementary school to a pre-k through eighth grade center.

"Some of this can indeed still be attributed to staffing changes, as historically, any time you have a campus principal change, that will lead to increased turnover as teachers seek to move to other campuses with leadership they are more familiar with in the first two years," Basinger said. "Also, whenever there is a head football coach change at a high school, there will be a number of vacancies created as a number of the existing coaching staff, who are also teachers, are recruited to other programs throughout the state."

However, Basinger said that the district does recognize that Beaumont United has been a hard-to-fill campus, in spite of recent leadership changes.

"(We are) making the needs of that campus, as well as other hard-to-fill campuses within the district, a targeted priority in our recruitment efforts," he said.

Across the entire district, there are 193 total openings, also down from the some 230 it had at the beginning of the school year.

The largest number of openings are in the administration building an annex with 42, ranging from clerk positions to administrator roles.

The district's maintenance department has 12 positions open, reflecting "several new positions" that were added to "improve and maintain the quality" of district facilities, Samuels said.

While vacancies are currently trending down for Beaumont ISD, it knows the teacher shortage is not waning.

"The issue of teacher shortage remains the same," Basinger said. "The district recognizes that, despite this fact, we have a responsibility to ensure these positions are filled so that our students receive the best education possible. This is leading to our investigating and utilizing new and innovative methods to identify and attract qualified candidates to not only the field of education, but to our district specifically."

olivia.malick@hearst.com

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