Sacramento City Unified Needs 270 Special Needs Teachers. How It Plans to Recruit Before School Starts

Sacramento City Unified School District held a recruitment fair Monday to recruit special education teachers and classroom aides. The district plans to hire 270 new employees in the department by the start of the school year.

Administrators are trying to fill 70 teacher vacancies and 200 assistants in the district’s schools. Director of Talent Management Tiffany Smith-Simmons said their goal is to be fully staffed by the first day of school, which is earlier than usual this year.

The job fair follows several public complaints about the district’s special education program, including a settlement of a lawsuit with the Black Parallel School Board, a letter from the state Department of Education and a grand jury report on the program’s shortcomings.

According to Smith-Simmons, the fair was designed to ensure that as many candidates as possible were ready by Aug. 19. Interview panels met with candidates on site, and nurses conducted tuberculosis screenings and fingerprinting to speed up the onboarding process.

By the end of the day, the district had hired 40 new assistants and four new teachers who are ready to start on day one. The district is still recruiting for the remaining positions.

Newly hired teaching assistant Alejandra Rodriguez is brand new to the classroom, but she feels connected to the special needs community because her older brother is autistic. She and her family have seen the impact an educator can have on the lives and families of children with autism. Her family still keeps in touch with her brother’s kindergarten teacher, and Rodriguez said that was partly what inspired her to pursue a career in special education.

“She was an influential person in me getting this job,” Rodriguez said.

The scholarship also attracted more experienced teachers, such as Maria Quillici, who has 16 years of teaching experience. Her first few years as a teacher were difficult due to the 2008 recession, when she was laid off from several schools due to budgetary problems. She later earned her certificate in early childhood special education in hopes of finding a more secure job.

After 10 years at Natomas Unified and one at Twin Rivers Unified School District, Quillici found the job search daunting again. She has been applying for positions since May and jokes that she must have applied to “like five million other places.” Several opportunities at other schools fell through at the end of the process, which Quillici blamed on the budget problems plaguing many California schools.

After being “demoralized” by the months-long job search, Quillici attended Sacramento City Unified’s job fair with no expectations. After a successful interview, she walked out of the building elated with a job as a special education kindergarten teacher at Washington Elementary School. She said the fact that they are willing to hire someone with a lot of experience (who is more expensive to hire) bodes well for the district.

“They seemed really excited to see someone with my experience apply and that’s just a really good feeling,” she said. “And I think when you feel valued as a teacher and you feel like your experience is valued, that feeling carries over to the students. And we can take better care of the students when we feel like we’re being taken care of.”

Challenges for the Sacramento City Unified School District’s Special Education Program

Experts suspect that the increased demand for special education has made the teacher shortage more apparent. About 15% of Sacramento City Unified students are enrolled in special education programs for at least part of the day. Black students in the district are overrepresented in the program, prompting a lawsuit by the Black Parallel School Board that was settled in May 2023.

The criticism Sacramento City Unified has faced for its special education programs has only grown in recent months, as local and state agencies have publicly condemned the district. A scathing report from the Sacramento grand jury released in May said the district “completely fails its most vulnerable students.” The report followed an April letter from the state Department of Education that not only chastised the district for failing to comply with federal and state disability education laws, but also for failing to respond to 40 emails and 22 phone calls asking district officials to provide state-required documentation about the special education program.

Key recommendations in the grand jury report include developing and adopting a comprehensive special education plan in February, improving early intervention assessments, taking corrective action to reduce the number of students of color in special education programs, and requiring professional development for teachers. District special education administrators Krystal Thomas and Geovanni Linares previously focused on improved teacher training as a means to improve the program as a whole.

District spokesman Al Goldberg said they will implement staff training based on the action plan created after the Black Parallel School Board settlement and that further staff training is underway. The settlement also called for a newly appointed independent monitor who will be responsible for creating an action plan to implement special education policies and procedures.

The shortage of teachers in special education is a national problem

The shortage of special education teachers is a challenge for schools across the country. The number of students in special education has doubled nationwide in recent decades, but the number of students willing to go to work has declined in recent years, likely due to poor wages and difficult circumstances.

For teachers at Sacramento City Unified, the pay range starts at $65,115 and is capped at $140,436 per year, according to EdJoin.org. Salaries for special education aides start at $18.19 and are capped at $20.95 per hour, a few dollars above California’s $16 minimum wage. The district offers fully covered health insurance for employees and their families, and classroom experience that could lead to a teaching career later in life.

“I hope I have a good experience as a teaching assistant so that I might want to get a bachelor’s or master’s degree to become a teacher,” Rodriguez said.

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