The Washoe County School District is moving into what they call the most critical two weeks heading into the new school year.

With students starting class on August 14th teachers are going to be getting to work on August 8th, just one week of preparation before the school year begins. However, the district is struggling with staffing shortages.

They project they’ll have less than 50 vacancies soon, which has shown to be an improvement compared to past years, but they’ve still been searching for quality applicants through conferences, job fairs and many of their other resources, exhausting all of their options to attract quality talent in the district to help their students in the classrooms.

They need people to fill positions in transportation, even though they say they’ve been doing great at filling these positions to the point of being able to run full bus routes once again, however they still have a few more unfilled spots.

They also need people to fill positions in their special education department, and they need more teachers as a whole.

To help fill the gap they’ve been calling in retired substitutes or those who used to work as teachers to come and help while they hire more people, leaving no stone unturned.

Dr. Kristina Mason, Chief Talent Officer for the WCSD says, “We realize that it’s not just about a warm body, it’s a warm body knows what they’re supposed to be doing with students how to lesson plan how to collaborate with their colleagues from the beginning.”

Dr. Mason says the requirements for substitutes have changed. They now require a degree from a university on top of having a substitutes certification in the state of Nevada, which not every state requires.

“One of the hurdles we’ve been helping people understand is that nuance of difference and that they have to be certificated as a substitute through MDE.”

She says this process often gets backlogged because those individuals who want to be substitutes have to initiate the certification process on their own.

Another hurdle they run into in the hiring process is fingerprinting. Fingerprinting is required, and to be a teacher you have to get it done twice, once through the school and once through the state because the school district cannot legally share information with other fingerprinting entities.

“That has been a challenge for some people, making sure the fingerprints get processed and we get them back in a way that allows us to put them in with the kids as quickly as we possibly can.”

They also say the staff they’ve been hiring so far has been great.

“We know that it is people that are going to make the difference for our kids, you know so we’re going to invest in those people as much as we can,” says Dr. Mason. 

If you’re interested in applying for a position with the Washoe County School District, we have the link to those job opportunities here.