Signs of Life

An article in Sunday's Arizona Republic may indicate there is initial relief to the current downtrend in teacher hiring. Some 7,000 AZ teachers were RIF'd within the last couple months. The article highlighted that Gilbert USD brought back 130 of 267 teachers, Peoria USD 188 of 300, Dysart USD 104 of 209, Scottsdale USD 129.5 of 221 and Deer Valley USD 71 of 105. However, the future picture over the next couple months seems as vague as it has been over the last several weeks. How deep the budget "cut" will be to education is uncertain. The proposed plans vary if their reaches into Education budget. For a comparison of the budget proposals click here. Additionally, according to US Dept of Education, Arizona is not among the 27 states that have received $22billion (of 53.6billion) in State Stabilization Funding from the Recovery Act (Stimulus). Under the Stabilization Fund, Arizona has been apportioned $1,016,955,000. Governor Brewer released a statement May 22nd, that the state has submitted application for State Stabilization Funds and that $832 million will be toward education (not all to K-12) which the Arizona Office of Economic Recovery outlines will come as $250million for FY09 K-12 Ed and $224 for FY10 K-12 Ed. Furthermore, Arizona has $194,108,000 under Recovery Act Title I Grants to LEA's (districts) as well as $178,476,000 under IDEA Part B Grants to States. How these funds will find their way to AZ districts seems to be lacking in transparency.

And, just on Monday, VP Joe Biden released the Roadmap to Recovery to President Obama outlining the funding of 135,000 education jobs (see page 9). Though somewhat vague on the Arizona numbers, the state is in the "second tier" along with MI, MO, NJ, PA, OH and WA for between 5,001 and 10,000 jobs (not all will be teachers). Only one state, TX, is in "first tier" with 10,ooo+ eduction jobs funded.

From my point of view, districts and schools are remaining reserved on posting and filling teaching positions as details for individual districts get worked out. In other words, they are waiting until "the money is in the bank" to proceed with staffing. Districts/schools are currently acting on what they know. There is still much they don't know when it comes to their operating budget for the coming school year. As this picture becomes clearer there will quickly be a rise in posting/advertising and hiring. There will be somewhat of a gap in the numbers of those RIF'd and those recalled. Many RIF'd teachers will not wait to hopefully be recalled and will seek teaching positions elsewhere. Thus this will end up creating vacancies. The best advise we can give is to periodically look at www.arizonaeducationjobs.com and also at individual district HR web pages for vacancy postings. You can find a listing of district web pages here and here. In addition, watch the "Hot Jobs" section of our web page at www.azttt.gov.