NHCS holds a specialty teaching fair to hire more teachers before 21-22 school year

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Today, New Hanover County Schools hosted a ‘Specialty Teaching Fair’, hoping to hire more educators before the 2021-2022 school year kicks off.

The ‘Specialty Teaching Fair’ was held at Hoggard High School from 9am to 1pm.

The school district is hiring specialists in Special Ed, Spanish, Mandarin, Career and Technical Education, and many other subjects.

Event attendees were able to speak with district leaders, apply and interview for open positions.

“I just got finished interviewing someone that had 24 years of experience and the first interview we had this morning was from a person that was just starting out and they would be first year teacher. So we have, — we have seen a lot of different walks. We have also seen a lot folks that are here, that have a career in another area,” said Philip Sutton, New Hanover High School Principal.

Some people who attended the special teaching fair were offered jobs on the spot.

New Hanover County Schools has 95% of its teaching roles filled, and is hoping to fill the remainder of the open positions for this upcoming calendar school year.

“There is a national teacher shortage as well. So, I think, –you know, we’re looking for teachers like everybody is. We don’t see as many students going to teacher ed programs and coming out. So really it’s an ongoing active search, to make sure that all of our classrooms have, –you know, highly qualified, high performing teachers,” said Jennifer Geller, NHCS Executive Director of Human Resources.

The district is also highlighting incentives to draw the interest of more potential teachers.

” For teachers in these hard to fill areas, the starting supplement is $9,000 a year. So, we are offering incentives. In addition to those things, we have an awesome professional development program, that allows teachers to grow in the classroom, and career pathways for out of the classroom, if eventually that’s where they’d like to go,” said Alison Coker, NHCS Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

New Hanover County Schools has listed all available positions they hope to fill by this upcoming school year on the district’s website.