Teacher shortage at public schools nears 50

The Public School System disclosed yesterday that it currently needs nearly 50 more classroom teachers and a few counselors to effectively deliver quality education to students.

This was the goal of the system’s Human Resource Office when it revived yesterday the islandwide teacher job fair at the Multi-Purpose Center, targeting local residents to fill the vacant positions.

PSS human resource officer Charlie Kenty, along with 20 school principals and administrators, accommodated the initial 20 applicants in the first few hours of the fair yesterday.

Screening and interviews were conducted by school principals who also prepared and decided on potential employees based on the eligibility list set by PSS.

Kenty said the nearly 50 teacher vacancies are mostly in content areas that require candidates to have a specialty or degree in subjects like Math, Science, English, and Language Arts.

PSS earlier said that hiring teachers for content areas, specifically for high schools, are a challenge to school principals because the required degrees could only be completed from universities and colleges outside the CNMI.

The Northern Marianas College, the sole community college on island, only offers an Elementary Education degree.

“We have about 18-20 applicants interviewed this morning and as soon as the principals make the determination, they can submit the recommendation to HR, which will prepare the contract and processing,” Kenty said, adding that yesterday’s job fair also aimed to “speed up” the filling of vacant positions, besides giving the local workforce an opportunity to join the system.

Currently, PSS has 492 classroom teachers for its nearly 11,000 students from Kindergarten to 12th grade.

Besides the lack of potential applicants, PSS is also having problems with the funding provided it by the local government to pay for the salary of teachers.

This fiscal year, the system is allocated $36.8 million, of which $35 million goes to personnel.

Kenty disclosed that the salary of the 50 target teachers would be covered by the stimulus money for PSS.

“Funding for the needed teachers and other vacancies would be paid in part by the stimulus money for PSS,” Kenty said.

He said the effort was also part of the system’s desire to “retain” teachers.

‘Few applicants’

Dandan Elementary School Principal Jonas Barcinas accommodated and interviewed yesterday just three applicants—one for Kindergarten, a Special Education teacher aide, and a teacher aide for Heritage Studies.

DES has the following vacancies: 1 Kindergarten teacher, a teacher for third grade, a school counselor, two Special Education aides, one Special Education teacher, and a teacher for Chamorro and Carolinian classes.

Barcinas has at present a total of 22 teachers, attending to 586 students.

Before the end of the whole-day event, he hopes to meet more applicants for all the vacant positions in his school.

Gregorio T. Camacho Elementary School principal Charlotte Camacho, meantime, said that only one applicant has applied with the school.

She needs one teacher for Special Education and a school counselor. However, the sole applicant interviewed was for a classroom teacher aide.

GTC at present has 13 teachers for its 231 students.

Ignacia Demapan, Kagman Elementary School principal, was happy to accommodate an applicant for a school counselor position, which she said may get the position based on qualifications.

Her school still needs three more classroom teachers and one for Special Education classes.

KagES has 32 teachers and 625 kids at present.

She lauded the system’s HR for coming up with the job fair, which she described as a “great idea” to address the teacher shortage in many schools.

Demapan said the process was also centralized and convenient for individuals who are looking for jobs in public schools.

Some administrators believed that better participation and a greater turnout could have been achieved if the job fair was held on a weekend.