Starting next week, they'll be putting the pedal to the metal to get the schools staffed and ready to go.

The Washoe County School District is trying to fill 139 jobs before the school year starts in less than a month. The district has about 700 to 800 candidates for the jobs.

Starting next week, they'll be putting the pedal to the metal to get the schools staffed and ready to go.

The district has long term substitute teachers and retirees who are ready to help fill gaps.

August 11 is the first day of school for Washoe County, but the district will need to have all its ducks in a row.

"So, we have 139 with 24 covers," said Alexander Yates, Talent Solutions Manager, WCSD. "That leaves 115 uncovered. We do have other plans with a pool of retirees that are interested in covering. But we are doing our best to first fill with a certified, you know, standard contracted teacher." 

The district has a lot of candidates, but they need to comb through to see which ones will best fit.

"It depends. I mean, some of the issues are, you know, not all of those candidates are valid," Yates said. "I mean, there's some that are out of state. We've got international candidates that we would need to work with them to get their visa sponsorship and licensure figured out."

Next week the district will host speed interviews for a different type of position a day. However, the district says some positions are harder to fill than others.

"We need music teachers," Yates said. "They're hard to find right now. Autism is a huge one we're working to develop. I mentioned pipelines to get, you know, get more teachers into the district with certain, endorsements, license certification. So, autism is a really big one because the numbers are growing and that a candidate pool just isn't there."

Yates says special education in general is hard to staff. He says out of the 139 openings, 74 are for special education, with the other 65 being for general education.

While having more than 100 job openings sounds frightening, Yates says it's not too out of the ordinary.

"This is kind of the end of the year, rush," he said. "We have changed some processes that have made things better. We've changed other processes that have made things look worse on paper, but our processes are actually better behind the scenes. So, I feel like we are making really good progress, but, you know, we are still at that number hurts still." 

Yates says there is a nationwide shortage of educators. He says the district is trying to look everywhere possible to find the best people to fill those open roles.