New Canaan Public Schools in the two weeks prior to the start of school lost three certified staff members to relocations, though the district is swiftly hiring for those jobs, officials say.
The district welcomed 34 new teachers at its induction and officials thought, at the time, that the schools were fully hired “in the certified area of our staffing,” according to Darlene Pianka, director of human resources.
“In the last two weeks we’ve had three resignations all due to the fact that people were relocating,” Pianka told members of the Board of Education at their regular meeting, held Sept. 2 in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “So we were unaware of that. Our wonderful administrators—and I’m not just saying that because they’re here—jumped on those situations relatively quickly.”
She continued: “And as of today, we’ve hired one of the positions, which is a literacy specialist at East School, and we are solidly in process for a technology integrator at Saxe and a psychologist that is shared between the high school and West.”
The comments came during a staffing update from Pianka.
Other than the two open positions, “all certified staff are hired and a few of the long-term sub situations that we have coming up in the early fall, probably of November, we’re working on filling those,” she said.
“Our assistant principals worked on all of those last week and we’re just about there,” Pianka continued. “We are fully staffed for our building subs in every building. And in terms of our campus monitors and security, we had an opening or two in that area—those are filled. And we’re currently working on additions to our substitute pool.”
District administrators looked closely at the sub pool during the summer and found that while nearly 60 people are working “very consistently,” another 15 “who aren’t working as much, but [we] really want to continue to build that pool as much as possible.”