Help wanted: Why Fairhaven schools are struggling to fill so many job openings

Matthew Ferreira, Standard-Times
·4 min read

FAIRHAVEN — "I remember as a kid my mom saying don’t be a teacher; there’s no jobs, everything’s full. Well, that tide has turned."

That was Fairhaven School Committee Chair Pam Kuechler's reaction after hearing the staffing report delivered at recent meeting by Superintendent Tara Kohler, who shared that the district has been struggling to fill 17 positions. The current openings are:

  • Paraprofessionals (4)

  • Board certified behavior analyst, or BCBA (1)

  • Teachers (4)

  • Long-term substitutes (2)

  • Clerical, coaching and other postings (5)

  • Assistant principal for the high school (1)

To illustrate the drastic increase in difficulty of finding job candidates, Kohler compared the numbers of applicants the jobs have gotten in different years. In the past few years, most have dropped to less than half the number of applicants jobs got in years before the pandemic.

Shrinking candidate pools

"If you look at those numbers, back in the spring of '17 we had 54 candidates," she said of the high school assistant principal job, citing the same number of candidates in 2019. "And in the summer of '22 we had 13 candidates."

When it came to the position of high school English language arts, or ELA, teacher, the data presented showed postings attracted a pool of 160 candidates in 2013, fluctuating in the years between then and 2018 when there were 77 candidates. In winter of 2023, Kohler said the candidate pool for an opening of same job title was 11.

"English used to be a dime a dozen," Kohler said.

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For elementary level paraprofessionals, data showed 105 applicants in 2013, dropping as low as 10 in spring of 2022. By summer, the number of applicants went up to 22, however Kohler said "only five were qualified," citing the Massachusetts requirement that paraprofessionals either having an associate's degree or pass what is known as the ParaPro Assessment.

Fairhaven Public Schools st...

Certification requirements cause further strain in recruiting teachers

One thing that's not making it any easier to fill teacher positions, Kohler said, is the state's certification requirements, which make it so teachers must be recertified every five years.

"You get someone who goes through an interview, is great, they come to meet with you and their certification is actually not valid anymore," she said, going on to use the high school physics teacher opening as an example of how this can impact the number of viable candidates in a pool of applicants.

A multiple exposure shot of Fairhaven High School on a fall day. Superintendent Tara Kohler says the district has seen the typical sizes of candidate pools for job openings shrink drastically in past years.
A multiple exposure shot of Fairhaven High School on a fall day. Superintendent Tara Kohler says the district has seen the typical sizes of candidate pools for job openings shrink drastically in past years.

"The year that there were eight [applicants] only six were certified," Kohler said, referring to the winter of 2016. "And this year, with the four applicants, only one was certified, and if I showed you the application, you should fire me if I hired them."

Kohler said other possible drivers of the shortage — which she noted is widely recognized as a national problem in education — could be the changing nature of the job to include things like active shooter training, and "public criticism and scrutiny" educators face.

"There’s been a lot of negative talk out there and that's been really worse since the pandemic," she said. "I’ve at least seen that be a pressure point for our teachers, at least the ones that I know who talk about what that’s been like."

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What Fairhaven Public Schools are doing

As presented by Kohler, the district's tactics to fill open positions include making use of educational and general job posting websites like SchoolSpring.com and ZipRecruiter.com, attending job fairs, advertising in The Standard-Times and using social media.

"We're trying, I promise," said Kohler, noting talk at the state level of lessening educator requirements. "This is where we're at, sadly."

Kohler also reminded the committee of work being done by district staff relative to the development of programming with the state's career assistance firm MassHire to attract more paraprofessionals.

"They’re working with a number of community organizations to try to get parents and students in the community who might want to work as a paraprofessionals, give them training and we’ll give them a job," she said, noting the program as envisioned would be free. "That’s trying to get off the ground."

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Job openings in Fairhaven schools remain an issue for many reasons