South Florida teaching jobs harder to find

Source: Sun-Sentinel

Plagued with money woes, South Florida school districts, as well as many throughout the state, are hiring fewer new teachers.

• The Miami-Dade school district, which in recent years hired at least a couple thousand new teachers each school year, plans to hire only about 150 -- for now. The new teacher orientation, set for early August, has been postponed indefinitely.

Because 1,236 teaching jobs have been eliminated, vacancies are being filled with those displaced teachers rather than new ones. Officials also expect fewer educators to leave because of the unstable economy.

Also contributing to Miami-Dade's declining need for fewer teachers: Student enrollment has dropped by more than 17,000 since the 2004-05 school year.

• In Broward, where enrollment dropped by nearly 14,000 students in the same time period, district officials can't even say how many new teachers they will hire.

At a job fair in May, they hired about 80 new teachers. About 25 more are waiting to be cleared.

They've typically averaged 1,800 new teachers per year in recent years, but now they are in the same situation as Miami-Dade -- filling vacancies with teachers whose positions no longer exist. About 171 of those teachers had been placed as of mid-July, with a dozen or so still waiting. There were some 130 vacancies to fill.