ANTIOCH — Years of declining enrollment have spared Antioch Unified the worst of the teacher shortage plaguing school districts throughout California.
The district lost 516 students between 2014-15 and last year alone and it is expecting about 433 more will leave this school year, a trend that administrators project will continue for the next five years.
Had it not been for about 100 teachers either retiring or leaving for other reasons last year, the district would have had to resort to layoffs, Chief Human Resources Officer Jessica Romeo said.
But knowing that the student head count eventually will start increasing again — contributing factors are already in play — officials have initiated steps to attract and retain teaching talent.
“Long term, we need to come up with a plan,” said Superintendent Stephanie Anello, noting that the number of students is bound to increase as the housing market improves and a now-wider and more commuter-friendly Highway 4 brings young families to Antioch.
Over the next 10 to 15 years, residents who contributed to Antioch Unified’s enrollment spike decades earlier likely will sell their homes after their children have grown, which might result in other families moving into the district, Anello added.
“We want to have something attractive to offer new teachers,” she said.
To that end, the district boosted their starting salary, which was lower than some surrounding school districts, Romeo said. All teachers received a 4 percent raise July 1, but the least experienced ones received an additional amount ranging from $1,000 to $3,000. The move brought the annual salary for teachers fresh out of college with no work experience to $44,262.
In addition, the district this year began offering a $2,500 hiring bonus to teachers who have the credentials to teach non-native English speakers or special education students — the latter is a particularly difficult position to fill — in return for a commitment to stay with the district at least two years.
Antioch Unified also embarked on its annual recruitment early this year in an effort to grab the best teachers. Since February, the district has attended 10 job fairs from Fresno and Sonoma state universities to the University of California at Davis, and in a departure from convention it interviewed candidates and made job offers on the spot.
At a job fair in the South Bay the district parlayed Antioch’s comparatively affordable housing market into a recruiting tool by displaying a large sign in its booth that proclaimed “Live where you work, love where you live.”
When officials from school districts in that area spotted the slogan, Anello said they congratulated Antioch on its clever marketing tactic and ruefully wished that housing prices in their region would allow teachers a shorter commute.
To make it even easier for teachers to live in Antioch — as of July, the average price of a home was $390,000 — the district this spring began toying with the possibility of building housing for them on an approximately 8-acre vacant parcel it owns on Deer Valley Road near Hillcrest Avenue.
The project would be the first time that Antioch Unified has used one of its properties for this purpose; the tentative plan is to lease the site to a developer, which would build apartments that the district would rent at below-market rates. The builder might finance the project with low-interest loans that the rental income would pay off in return for tax breaks, Acting Chief Business Official Chris Learned said.
Yet another way that Antioch Unified might avoid a teacher shortage is to introduce high school students to a career in education in the hope that they will pursue it.
The idea that district officials started kicking around earlier this year calls for teens to enroll in elective classes for college credit — those similar to what someone working toward a teaching credential takes — to learn teaching techniques.
By the time they enter college they already have taken a step toward entering the profession.
And research shows that most of those who do become teachers typically land their first job near their hometown, which means that Antioch Unified has created its own pool of candidates, Anello said.
Reach Rowena Coetsee at 925-779-7141. Follow her at Twitter.com/RowenaCoetsee
