Reading School District closer to filling numerous job vacancies

Aug. 25—A recent job fair attracted more than 100 potential applicants for various support jobs in the Reading School District.

Recruitment at the event at Central Middle School, 215 N. 12th St., focused on filing teachers' aides and other paraprofessionals, safe-schools officers, and food service, custodial and maintenance positions, Dr. Jennifer Murray, district superintendent, said Wednesday at a school board meeting.

"The total attendees at the job fair were 158 people, and 85 applications were started and submitted on that day," Murray said, noting over 100 interviews were held on site during the four-hour event and 42 conditional offers were made. "Fifteen of them were for safe-schools officers."

Representatives of the state's Migrant Education Program; Berks County Intermediate Unit, which provides substitute teaching services; and Durham Transportation, the Illinois-based company that provides bus service to the district, also attended the event.

"One of the things that we saw in our job fair was the requirement to having a GED or high school diploma was a barrier for some of our applicants," Murray said. "So I think in the future, we need to have some resources there for those individuals to help them with that requirement for us, in order to move forward."

Thanks to recent strategies, the district is getting closer to filling openings in a range of positions.

Like other school districts across the U.S., Reading has been struggling to find enough teachers, substitutes, food service workers, aides and other workers.

But in less than two months, the number of combined openings for all jobs dropped significantly to the 65 listed on the district's website as of Thursday from more than 200 in July.

The need for teachers remains the greatest.

Thirty-one, or nearly half, of the current openings are for teaching jobs: six in the elementary schools, nine at the high school and 16 in the district's middle schools.

Lack of adequate staffing had left certified teachers, aides and other professionals scrambling and some students underserved in the last school year, according to members of the district's teachers and support professionals unions, who addressed the school board in January.

At the time, there were roughly 100 teaching positions and 150 support positions vacant.

The district has come a long way since then in filling the openings, largely thanks to recruitment and retention incentives rolled out at the end of 2021.

These include a $1,000 retention bonus paid to existing staff at the end of that year and a $450 bonus for new recruits, approved by the school board early this year.

The district recently announced a $4 per hour increase in the hourly wage paid to its current safety staff. The district also increased the starting wage of all newly hired safety officers to $22 per hour for the 2022-23 school year.

In response to a request last year from the district's students for more safety officers in the schools, 56 safe-schools positions were added for the new school year.

Only one part-time SSO and one full-time school police officer are still needed, according to the district's website.

The district also approved collective bargaining agreements with its Food Services and Reading Paraprofessionals associations that increased all current and starting rates to at least $15 per hour.

To apply for a job visit the Reading School District's website.