Manatee County School District hopes to fill 125 teacher vacancies at job fair

BRADENTON -- Manatee County principals were hoping to chip away at more than 100 teacher vacancies in the school district with a job fair at the Bradenton Area Convention Center on Thursday.

Districtwide, about 230 employees overall will retire at the end of the school year, including about 100 teachers. With other position changes and moves, the district is expecting to need about 125 new teachers to start the school year, said Sarah Brown, the district's executive director of human resources. The district has about 2,800 teachers in the classrooms.

"Most of the schools that have vacancies are here with us today," she said.

Including Haile Middle School principal Sharon Scarborough. On Thursday, she was hoping to fill in teachers into a couple of her special areas -- agriculture, dance and guidance -- but she said she also likes events like Thursday's to collect resumes to hold onto in case she has future openings.

"It's nice to be early," she said. "We're closing out one year and you're hiring for the next."

In the morning, job seekers could shop around, checking out tables for the different schools and talking to principals and other school representatives. Morning arrivals also had to make sure they were already applicants in the district's online system. In the afternoon, the school representatives could then invite the job seekers for more formal interviews.

Manatee Elementary School Deb Houston said she and her team planned to interview eight candidates for between four and five job openings during the afternoon session.

This is the second year in a row the district has had a dedicated job fair, after many years without one, Brown said. Last year, the fair was held at the end of June. The late timing didn't work out as well for hiring teachers, so the event was moved up this year. The location was also moved out of Manatee Technical College to Palmetto. At the time of the job fair in June 2015, the district had about 115 teaching jobs open, as well.

"We wanted to make sure we had a space conducive to doing this as a convention-style event," Brown said.

Meghin Delaney, education reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7081. Follow her on Twitter@MeghinDelaney.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Manatee County School District hopes to fill 125 teacher vacancies at job fair ."