- April 26, 2024
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Instructional vacancies at Volusia County Schools total 187, up from 182 in late September. Support vacancies total 243. Year to date, the district has seen 204 separations.
At the same time, the district has added 655 new teachers, as of Oct. 18, based on data from its Teacher Induction Program, which provides instructional support and professional learning opportunities for new teachers.
"Our front door is working really well," said Ruben Colon, Volusia County School Board chair at the board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 25. "Our back door is pretty open."
The board was presented with a human resources update at the meeting, where Chief Human Resources Officer Mark West and Human Resources Director Stephanie Workman presented board members with the latest vacancy data. At the direction of the board, West brought forth more detailed separation data, including the most listed reason for separation — "personal reasons," cited 131 times — and the 10 schools or departments within the district with the highest turnover.
Hinson Middle School and the district's Information Technology Services department were the top two, with 11 and 9 separations, respectively. Campbell Middle School and Deltona High School tied for third with 7 separations.
In addition, 105 people as of Oct. 18, are taking a leave of absence. All in all, West said they have had a little over 300 people "that have basically walked out the door."
"It's a difficult time we recognize with teachers and with employees right now with what we have, and I think we're seeing an upswing with our increases in our hourly wages for our support employees, particularly with minimum wages going up, but we want to continue to work on our retention," West said.
He did highlight that the 655 teachers participating in the district's TIP program is double the number seen in past years.
As a result of the pop-up job fairs held this fall by VCS, 62 people have been hired — 15 teachers and 47 support personnel.
"Our goal is to continue trying to do these job fairs as frequently as we can," Workman said. "As we move into the month of November and December, our focus is going to be on trying to get those college graduates that are coming in."
Colon asked if the district had considered moving teachers at risk of separating from the district to another school or position to see if the employee could be retained. West said the district has taken steps to do this already, but that the district can look into this option further.
School Board member Linda Cuthbert said that she would love to see more mentoring at the campus level, perhaps from previously retired teachers who could come in to volunteer periodically to support teachers.
"The new ones just need somebody to talk to that they can confide in," Cuthbert said. "And I know they're probably scared to death to talk to their administrators, but a co-worker would be wonderful."
Fixing the salary compression should also be a priority in fixing the vacancy issue, School Board member Jamie Haynes said.
"I understand we want to take care of everybody, but each year there's only so much money to take care of everyone," Haynes said. "And I'm just going to state it again tonight: We want to help shut that back door and stop losing people, then we have to come up with a plan to address the problem that we've had for three years with instructional because of the compression piece, and because how we've pushed them and because we have not done our due diligence for what we can do for our experienced teachers."
