Wilton Schools See Record Number of Teaching Vacancies

Just as the Town of Wilton continues struggling to find personnel in the Finance Department, Wilton Public Schools is experiencing a record number of vacancies as the school year wraps up, according to Director of Human Resources and General Administration Maria Coleman.

Presenting to the Board of Education on Thursday night, Apr. 3, Coleman acknowledged 16 open teaching positions for the coming school year.

“Hiring season is off to quite a start,” she said, calling it a “buyers’ market” for new staff. “We are further along with more vacancies than we have ever had before. So we have more vacancies than we’ve ever had before and we are further along in our hiring and posting process than we’ve ever been before.”

“There are fewer people going into the field,” Coleman said. “That’s a national trend.”

She said that vacancies include six resignations and five retirements, along with one leave of absence for next year and some new positions. 

“Two of the positions are positions that were open this year after the school year started, and we had resignations we did not fill as full-time positions,” she said, with the district instead employing long-term substitutes to fill those posts for the 2024-25 school year.

Coleman said that she and several administrators recently attended the annual job fair at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, which she described as an important stop in their search for teachers.

The number of teacher job fairs has been dwindling, she said, with a once-popular one in Fairfield no longer happening.

“There are fewer and fewer candidates, unfortunately,” Coleman said. “They’re always very high-quality candidates, which is why we invest the time to go up to UConn annually.”

Coleman said her team walked away with around 100 names from the UConn event, many of whom did short interviews with some of the WPS administrators in attendance. She said there are already some candidates who have come in for formal interviews and are in the process of doing lesson demonstrations for administrators.

“It is a labor-intensive process,” she said, and her office tries to be aggressive.

“There are always two interviews at the building level, plus the third interview at Central Office,” Coleman said, which can include up to 45 minutes with Superintendent Kevin Smith.

“We want to be sure it’s a long-term relationship when we bring people on,” she said.

Part of enticing candidates includes offering some things that, she said, can set the district apart from others.

“Professional learning is a big one,” she said. “The tuition reimbursement is another one that people are really looking for and is appealing to them, the salaries, the benefits and again, I think just the personal connections that we make.”

“Every year, the teachers will say, ‘I just really liked the way I felt when I came to the building, when I was with the interview committee, when I was talking to the administrator,'” Coleman said.

“People are happy here, and we really develop a community,” she said.

“One of the most common themes that we hear, as we hire new staff, whether they’re brand new teachers or veteran teachers, is that they’re really looking for a place where they can grow professionally and where their desire to grow is supported,” she said.

According to the WPS’s website, there are currently openings for an art teacher, a physical education/health teacher, a math teacher, and a school psychologist at Wilton High School. Middlebrook School is looking for both a French teacher and a social studies teacher. A part-time strings teacher is needed at Cider Mill School, while there are openings for classroom teachers at Miller-Driscoll School.

Coleman said later that the district separately continues the search for its next assistant superintendent for special services, a post being vacated by Andrea Leonardi when she retires at the end of June.

“We are beginning the interview process for that position,” Coleman said, noting that there were also custodial, substitute and other non-certified positions for which vacancies need to be filled as well.

Asked whether the district sought to forge connections for future openings, Coleman said it generally wasn’t their intention, but sometimes it happens during the process.

“We’re really working for immediate positions, (but) we make connections with candidates even if we don’t have open positions … We try to develop those relationships and stay in touch,” she said.