Poachers Target Oregon Teachers

Over at Booth 725 of the Oregon Professional Educator’s Fair, Dallas-area schools recruiter Mark Speck was working the crowd of would-be teachers with the practiced finesse of a car salesman -- slapping backs, handing out souvenir pocket clocks, and talking up life in a region that will need 8,000 new teachers next year.

Across the cavernous hall at the Oregon Convention Center, David Karell, a Sacramento-area assistant superintendent of schools, dangled possible signing bonuses of up to $7,000 in front of Oregon teachers, many of whom have given up hope of finding or keeping a job in their home state.

Teacher shortage or no, Oregon’s schools have been hit hard this year by a series of state budget cuts, slashed school days and teacher layoffs. Next year looks to be no better.

That has made Oregon one of the hottest targets for school recruiters from across the West, some of whom are looking to hire thousands of teachers to keep up with rapid population growth.

“We go where they are laying off teachers, wherever we think there’s an opportunity,” said Speck, whose team is also planning trips to Washington state, Colorado, Minnesota and Nashville, Tenn. “We built two brand-new elementary schools last year, and before they were done we had to build two portable classrooms.”

In the past, teacher poaching has been most common among neighboring states, especially when one is relatively poor and the other has fast-growing urban centers. In cash-poor Louisiana, for instance, teachers drive to work past a billboard that advertises jobs in nearby Houston with the slogan: “Starting salaries up to 40k, a state away.”

Additionally, certain states have acquired reputations as particularly voracious recruiters; Florida, for example, has launched an aggressive marketing campaign to recruit 25,000 new teachers by next fall to fulfill voter-mandated class-size reductions.

But Oregon’s intense education woes, lampooned in Doonesbury and chronicled in newspapers across the country, have attracted diverse recruiters from as far away as Pennsylvania, plus larger numbers than usual from California, Nevada and Arizona.

They came to the recent Portland fair bearing logo-embossed key chains and refrigerator magnets and talking up the virtues of their districts.

San Jose-area recruiter Mary Beth Chambless assured candidates that her school was in the “very prettiest part of California,” while Los Angeles touted a minimum starting salary of $41,177 for credentialed teachers.

Many of the 3,000 educators who attended the fair -- a mix of new graduates and seasoned classroom teachers -- said they could no longer wait for things to improve in Oregon, which is dependent on income tax for the bulk of its education funding but boasts one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.

Especially long lines stretched from the Clark County, Nev., booth -- the Las Vegas-area district is now the country’s sixth largest and gaining, with plans to open four new elementary schools, two middle schools and two new high schools next year, in what recruiter Sheri Davies termed “an off year for construction for us.”

The district needs to hire at least 1,100 new teachers next year, Davies said. Even so, all the interview slots she’d set aside for the Portland fair had been filled by noon, leaving her to tell packs of latecomers that they’d have to reschedule.

Tere Knight, who has taught special education at a Lincoln City high school for several years, said she was gunning for a new job in either Las Vegas or Salinas, Calif.

“If I honestly thought the funding in Oregon would change I would stay,” she said. “But we have seen such significant losses as educators, and it’s very difficult to go backwards -- I don’t feel I have had a choice. My suspicion is that Vegas has the dollars to give me what I need, and the time to do it.”

The hometown districts that did set up booths for the fair were largely there as placeholders.

Recruiters for Beaverton told the long lines of mostly recent graduates hoping to stay close to home that they wouldn’t know whether they’d have the money to hire anyone until June, if then.

Nearby, Madras advertised a single job, for a high school principal, and Forest Grove posted a sign informing candidates that no district jobs were available.

Even districts from rural Oregon, traditionally heavy recruiters because of high turnover and retirement rates, had scaled back their efforts.

Richard McIlmoil, a prospective art teacher hoping to find a job in the small college town of La Grande, said the last he’d heard, the district was facing an additional $2.3 million in budget cuts, and bracing for possible layoffs and bigger class sizes.

“I’d have liked to stay out there, but it’s looking real bleak,” McIlmoil said. “I heard there were supposed to be three Oregon schools here hiring art teachers, but they’ve all dropped out. In California, though, they say they’re probably still going to have it.”