The Rochester City School District is grappling with just under 200 vacant positions — most of them teachers, according to a district presentation to the city school board this week.
Special education classrooms are hit hardest, with 25 full-time teacher vacancies.
t’s more than the vacancies in English language learning, math and science combined.
"A lot of these positions that are missing are things that impact us at the instructional core,” school board member Camille Simmons said. “So when we're talking about children's education, I just can't look at that as standard.”
Simmons said she’s also concerned about how many teachers might not be certified for the subject they’re teaching.
Chris Miller, the district's chief of human capital, highlighted critical shortages in teacher recruitment pools both locally and across the state.
Among the specialties lacking in candidates: bilingual education, English language learning. middle and high school special education, math, science, and Spanish.
That reflects an earlier prediction. In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office warned that New York state would need about 180,000 new teachers over the next decade to meet the demand.
Miller presented a community call to action to expand recruitment efforts as part of a years-long process called Teach Rochester.
“Our approach is to do as many different things as we can, and all of those things add up into something larger,” Miller said.
Those efforts include more university partnerships and mentorships. And a survey for community input.
The survey was initially blocked by a permissions firewall. After WXXI News asked about the blocked access, the firewall was lifted.
School board President Cynthia Elliott said recruitment is just one part of the equation.
“If we recruit, we have to make sure that we are supporting them, or they will leave. And that does happen quite often,” Elliott said. “We just have not known how to care for the ones that we get."
