Recruiting trips help the district locate recent college graduates in Oklahoma and beyond.
Zarrow International School second-grade teacher Sherlane Cintron interacts with students on Friday. Stephen Pingry / Tulsa World
By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer
Published, Tulsa World: 3/8/2009 4:12 AM
Last Modified: 3/8/2009 4:33 AM
An ever-shrinking pool of teaching candidates has made Tulsa Public Schools exchange its old school ways for corporate recruiting strategies.
Gone are the days of the district sending a representative to a handful of teacher career fairs each spring and principals being totally on their own when it came to filling vacancies over the summer.
Now, TPS seeks applicants year-round, and from smaller Oklahoma colleges and universities, 10 other states and even Puerto Rico.
"If we hadn't stepped up our college recruiting efforts, we would be in really difficult situations," said John Harris, director of recruiting for TPS. "Before we started making changes five years ago, 50 to 120 vacancies would have been typical at the beginning of the school year, as it still is in Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Fort Worth and other large districts in the region. Last year, we were short six teachers out of 3,100."
TPS began by creating a centralized applicant pool in 2003. Every principal in the district was using it within a year's time.
The next change in approach was to reverse the long-standing trend of hiring about 75 percent experienced teachers and 25 percent new teachers.
"We were kind of rotating bad tires with other Tulsa County school districts," Harris said.
That goal led TPS to step up its efforts to attract recent college graduates. Principals, deans and teacher-intern coordinators book speaking engagements and topical workshops at colleges so they can meet local college
They also take turns going on recruiting trips to historically black colleges in the South and even Puerto Rico in search of minority applicants.
"You absolutely have to do that because not enough of them are coming through Oklahoma," said Bill Nafztger, chief human resource officer for TPS.
At the University of Puerto Rico's Recinto de Rio Piedras campus, an assistant principal from Rogers High School found a December graduate to fill a vacancy in the Spanish immersion program at Zarrow International School, 2714 S. 90th East Ave.
"It was my last day of university, and it was my birthday, the fourth of December. I thought, it's a big opportunity, why do I not take it?" said Sherlane Cintron. "I went home and told my parents that I had signed a contract offer, and my father said, 'Do you even know where Oklahoma is?' "
Zarrow Principal Robin Postier said she and other employees were happy to help Cintron find an apartment, car and furniture and to reassure her parents.
"We are really a family here because I have faculty members from several other foreign countries, such as Honduras, Cuba and Colombia," Postier said. "The students adore Senorita Cintron, and we like to have native speakers for our program because they can teach the culture, not just the language."
In Tulsa, Cintron said she has greater job security than she would have back home — and classroom resources and materials beyond her wildest dreams.
"I have everything!. So many books and a Smart Board. I feel so glad and happy, happy, happy," she said Friday.
District officials have also expanded their search north to states such as Minnesota and Ohio, where teaching positions are scarce.
Ryan Buell, a new math teacher at Whitney Middle School, was recently recruited from Bowling Green State University in northwestern Ohio.
"I first heard about TPS through the career center at Bowling Green. I kind of laughed about it at first because I didn't even know where Tulsa was in Oklahoma. Where I'm from, it's all cowboy hats and spurs when we think about Oklahoma," Buell said.
With his college graduation in December fast approaching, Buell started considering the Tulsa school district's offer of a teaching job that would begin in January, instead of August or September.
"No other school district was going to offer me a job two weeks after I graduated because in Ohio, the education job market is tight," he said.
Buell, who just turned 23, admits that his college buddies back home in Ohio "think I'm crazy," but he's not looking back.
"I didn't know anybody in Tulsa, but everybody has been really great," Buell said. "There's no way I thought I would end up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but I will definitely stay."
Tulsa Public Schools still faces significant challenges in finding teachers who are qualified to teach math, science or specialty foreign languages.
"Right now, recruiting Latin teachers is like panning for gold in the Arkansas River," Naftzger lamented.
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