Citywide public school job board will help stem the tide of a recruitment and retention crisis
Starting in December, teachers seeking jobs in New Orleans public schools will have an easier way than ever to find one. Schools seeking teachers will have an easier time of it, too. This is important; New Orleans, like much of the country, is facing a crisis in teacher retention and recruitment. Around 25% of educators leave their roles each year, and we are left with hundreds of open positions across the district. It’s therefore critical that we make it as easy as possible for schools to hire experienced teachers and for teachers to find great jobs.
Because NOLA Public Schools (NOLA-PS) is made up of many autonomous public schools and networks, the district does not have a centralized way to see open roles across many schools at once, as a teacher in a traditional district would be able to. This system allows those closest to students and teachers to make the decisions about their schools; it also offers up an opportunity to help with hiring.
The New Orleans Teacher Job Board provides that centralized space–it is, quite literally, an online “job board” to which schools can post roles and teachers can apply for them. It also allows educators to quickly share their resumes more broadly, so that schools can reach out to them directly if a new role opens up.
The New Orleans Teacher Job Board is the evolution of Teach New Orleans (TNO), which NSNO launched in 2018. Since that launch, the team has been hard at work connecting excellent educators from around the country to schools in our city and providing support and guidance to candidates in their job search. These efforts have connected 400 educators to their roles in New Orleans public schools. Almost every charter school operator (network or individual school) in the district has made a hire through TNO.
This has been a great success, but this work is urgent, and we always seek to improve. We have sought feedback all along from candidates and partners on what about TNO has been most helpful for them. What schools and educators really wanted was an improved job board. We made the choice to focus on doing that one thing and doing it the best, reworking TNO to be simply, and powerfully, the New Orleans Teacher Job Board.
The New Orleans Teacher Job Board will make it even easier for individuals interested in working in New Orleans public schools to find open positions that match their interests and experience. It has a number of key features:
Job postings: Educators can search all open roles across our system of schools. They can refine their search by grade level and subject area. Our new website is linked to schools’ websites; when many schools in our system post a job on their own website, it automatically loads to ours.
Candidate Support: Educators can choose to be connected to a New Orleans Teacher Job Board team member to learn more about our schools and talk through specific openings that may be a good fit.
Resume Drop: Educators can fill out a single form and share their resume with all 83 schools in our district. Once they submit, all schools receive a copy of the resume, and can contact candidates directly for open roles that match their skills and experience.
School Support: Schools can reach out to the New Orleans Teacher Job Board team if they are having trouble finding candidates for a specific position; we are here to help.
New Orleans is full of strong, experienced educators. They deserve roles that feel like a real fit. Their students deserve this, too. They deserve educators who have found a job they’re eager to stay in for years and years, so that their presence can be a stabilizing constant–we want a fifth grader to be able to walk down the hall and show their best work to their first-grade teacher. We want a high school senior to be able to tell her seventh-grade sibling to look forward to getting to have the same coach that she does. And we want teachers to find a place in a school that feels right for them, where they’re part of a supportive community that makes their hard work possible. If all this happens, we expect to see New Orleans schools grow stronger than ever. We believe the New Orleans Teacher Job Board will help make it possible.