Tucson Unified to hire third-party teachers to fill some vacancies

Tucson Unified School District, still short of educators, will hire up to five teachers from a third-party company to fill vacancies in high-need areas, particularly secondary math education.

The measure, approved 3-1 by the governing board on Tuesday, allocates up to $385,000 to hire five general education teachers through Maxim Healthcare Services, a company with offices in Tucson that provides educational and health-care staffing and other services nationwide.

“The reason we’re bringing this topic, once again, to the governing board is because of the high need of teacher positions … across the district,” said Flori Huitt, TUSD’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

While she did not provide a full list of schools and positions, Huitt said the Maxim teachers will be assigned to areas such as secondary math and schools in southwestern Tucson, such as Pistor and Valencia middle schools.

Board members approved a similar item in February, Huitt said, because of vacancies in general education. Board member Ravi Shah said it’s a measure that’s been ongoing for the past two years.

Prior to assigning a Maxim teacher to a position, school administrators would need to meet four requirements, Huitt said: to have identified the vacancy as a hard-to-fill position, offered teachers on campus the opportunity to cover the vacancy, maximized the number of students in classrooms and requested a long-term substitute from the district.

The Maxim teachers would be hired for the full school year, but Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said TUSD will still continue its teacher hiring efforts.

If the district finds a qualified candidate for a position already filled by a Maxim teacher, he said, the school will make the switch at the start of the spring semester to minimize disruptions to students’ learning experiences.

Board members Shah, Adelita Grijalva and Natalie Luna Rose voted in favor of hiring the Maxim teachers. Member Sadie Shaw voted against it.

Last month, the district discussed an emergency solution of hiring third-party online teachers from a Chicago-based company, Elevate K-12, to virtually cover secondary math classes if unable to find qualified candidates for those vacancies.

At that time, TUSD needed up to 24 more math teachers at a dozen schools; no update on total vacancies was provided at Tuesday’s board meeting. Also, it was unclear from Tuesday’s presentation whether the option of hiring that company is still on the table. The new school year started Aug. 4.

Reluctant votes

Shaw said it would be a better investment to increase the pay rates for the district’s substitute teachers to fill those positions, rather than hire contracted teachers from an outside company.

“I feel that we keep kicking the can down the road in getting these contracted teachers, and I feel like it’s destroying the morale of our sub group,” she said.

But Grijalva said filling the vacancies with rotating daily substitutes who are not qualified in math wouldn’t help advance the students’ education.

“I would like to see how much more we could do with the teachers we already have that are willing to do it,” Grijalva said in reference to asking current teachers to take on additional workloads to fill those vacancies.

She suggested working with the teachers’ union, the Teachers Education Association, to look at how the district could make that additional workload more attractive to teachers by increasing compensation.

“I think the teachers that are doing (it) are doing it because they know that’s what’s good for kids and they’re trying to pitch in,” she said. “But I don’t think a daily sub and changing a person repeatedly is something that works for schools.”

Shah, noting that the district has relied on hiring third-party teachers for two years, said, “We’ll have to continue addressing the system issues to try and make this the last time.”

He said he was only in favor of approving the measure to address students’ current needs.

Grijalva said she also reluctantly voted in favor but didn’t think it was an ideal solution.

“I know this is not something that anyone wants to bring forward,” she said. “But I do know that the vacancy issues are real. … It is a ripple effect and that is not good for our kids.”