LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – With the start of the school year around the corner, the Clark County School District says they have 1,078 vacancies.
The Teacher FastTrack Program is working to make a dent in that statistic through the Public Education Foundation.
Tuesday they celebrated 45 newly licensed teachers, 40 of those teachers are headed to CCSD.
The FastTrack Program leads into UNLV’s Paraprofessional Pathways Project, which FOX5 has covered before. It allows people that are already working as paraprofessionals in schools to get their teaching license quickly while continuing their work.
Education officials say the positions they are filling are critical.
The number of full-time substitute teachers in CCSD has more-than-doubled in three years, according to data from the district.
The President of the Public Education Foundation, Kirsten Searer, says there aren’t enough teaching colleges in Nevada to keep up with demand.
As a state, she says we hire about 2,100 teachers per year. The four teaching colleges only graduate about 700 to 900.
“We’re operating at a deficit from the beginning, and so we have traditionally supplemented that number by recruiting folks from out of state,” Searer says.
CCSD launched a teacher recruitment campaign in California in May titled “We are Vegas. We are CCSD.” It highlighted the different entertainment options in the valley.
Searer says Nevada teachers are already settled in the community, and that the foundation suspects they will stay longer. Especially teachers like Arianna Hicks, who spent the last year getting licensed through the FastTrack Program while doubling as a special education teaching assistant.
Wednesday she’ll start as a full time teacher at CCSD.
“I want all my students to engage with each other,” Hicks says. “I want my classroom to feel like a family.”
Searer says they plan to grow the FastTrack Program, with the goal of putting an additional 200 teachers in Nevada classrooms every year.
CCSD says they’re set to welcome 1,200 new educators at the New Teacher Kickoff event Thursday, and that they currently have less vacancies than they did at the start of the 2023/24 school year.
“Hiring additional teachers for the first day of school and throughout the year continues,” a spokesperson for the district says.
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