Jefferson County board hears HR report showing hundreds of open positions, faster internal hiring times

The Jefferson County Board of Education received a staffing report July 8 showing hundreds of active job postings across the district and steps HR is taking to fill them.

Cynthia Grama, an HR staff member who presented the review, told the board the district counted 362 classroom teacher vacancies as of June 23 and that Munis showed 6,165 certified teacher positions listed as filled for the coming year. Grama said vacancy counts reflect actively posted positions — not all allocated or funded positions — and stressed the numbers are a snapshot in time.

"Positions are posted not only on that job board, but they're posted on AppleTrack," Grama said, adding that certified positions must be posted on the state job site for 15 days and classified positions a minimum of seven days. "If you take out the posting time, we were turning those around in a little over seven days." She said the average from request-to-offer during the transfer window was about 22 days, which includes the mandatory posting period.

Why it matters: board members said teacher shortages and unfilled positions affect classroom stability and asked what the board can do to help recruitment. Grama described pipelines and partnerships the district uses — including university alternative-certification programs, Louisville Teacher Residency, Teach Kentucky and a contract with staffing firm Kelly Education — and said the district is recruiting for roughly 150 classified vacancies through the agency. She also said the district is excluding bus drivers from the presented counts because that topic had been covered recently.

Details from the…