LA Unified Needs to Fill Thousands of Staff, Teacher Vacancies in 2 Months

A bus containing Los Angeles Unified School District students drives in Los Angeles on Sept. 29, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is looking to fill as many as 1,000 staff positions and 1,500 teaching positions for the 2022–23 school year.

Open positions are in various areas, including clerical and administration, janitorial services, food services, school safety, transportation, early education, and special education.

All applicants must be U.S. citizens or legal residents and be vaccinated against COVID-19.

In hopes of filling these vacant non-teaching positions, the district will host four hiring fairs this month for graduating LAUSD high school seniors.

LAUSD’s hiring fair coordinator Frank Saldivar told The Epoch Times that the district is looking to fill between 800 and 1,000 total positions by this fall.

Saldivar said this number is subject to change, however, and that the district expects to see a number of positions vacated as some staff members are promoted and some resign at the end of the current school year.

The LAUSD also needs to fill several new staff positions this school year, Saldivar said. For example, transitional kindergarten classroom aide is a newly created position that has about 400 vacancies.

As for teaching positions, the district needs to hire 1,500 teachers and support service providers, according to an LAUSD spokesperson.

“We are working directly with our school leaders and local districts to ensure that school-based staffing needs are met by the first day of school,” an LAUSD spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

This comes after LAUSD fired more than 800 staff members during the 2021–22 school year for non-compliance with its COVID-19 staff vaccine mandate, which was enacted in November.

In addition, about 600 teachers were forced to move out of classrooms to teach remotely in LAUSD’s online learning program, City of Angels, according to the parent and teacher advocacy group Los Angeles Educators & Parents United.

The district faced a shortage of about 420 teachers this spring semester.

To fill in the gaps, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho directed non-teaching district staff who held teaching credentials or who formerly held teaching positions to fill those positions for the rest of the school year.

In March, nonprofit education group Partnerships for Los Angeles Schools reported (pdf) that the district had more than 10,000 unfilled staff vacancies, which disproportionately affects schools with more minority and economically disadvantaged students.

The district has also hired 2,336 new teachers this school year, of whom only 26 percent are fully credentialed by the state to teach, according to a March 29 report by the district’s board of education.