Hartford Public Schools recruiting teachers from Puerto Rico as district faces staffing shortages

By AYAH GALAL

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    HARTFORD, Connecticut (WFSB) — School districts all over the country are dealing with staffing shortages.

In an effort to help fill vacancies in Hartford Public Schools, the district is recruiting teachers from Puerto Rico.

Interviews are taking place on the island this week.

As we enter year three of the pandemic, schools in Hartford are operating at 75% of typical staffing levels.

“This is not sustainable the way we are serving our students,” said Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, Superintendent of Hartford Public Schools.

Torres-Rodriguez says Special Education, Bilingual Education and Speech and Language are among the highest areas of need.

“It’s all-hands-on-deck. Our talent team is trying to figure out how to mitigate the vacancies that we currently have,” she said.

In an effort to seek out more bilingual teachers, Hartford Public Schools are recruiting teachers from Puerto Rico to fill vacant positions for the next school year.

The program is called “Paso a Paso,” which is Spanish for “step by step.”

“Essentially it is making sure we provide a biliterate, bilingual, bicultural, approach to recruitment,” Torres-Rodriguez said.

The city of Hartford has strong ties to Puerto Rico and 55% of Hartford Public Schools students are Hispanic/Latino.

A pilot version of the program launched just before the pandemic hit.

“One of the major issues that we’re looking at is that the responsibilities of the educator has become so much bigger in the past few years,” said Corey Moses, First Vice President of the Hartford Federation of Teachers.

The Hartford Federation of Teachers is expressing concern over current staffing levels.

The union says retention is critical.

“If there’s not adequate staffing, students aren’t getting the full range of their educational programing and what happens for the staff in the schools is they have to cover these gaps and so it’s stretching our staff much thinner which is leading to burnout,” said Carol Gale, President of the Hartford Federation of Teachers.

Teachers hired through the step by step program receive a relocation stipend and other benefits.

The superintendent and some district staff leave for Puerto Rico on Wednesday.

The hope is to be able to hire 15 full-time teachers.

If there are more qualified candidates, they do have the funding in place to potentially hire more teachers.

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