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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- With the anticipated teacher shortage looming, some school officials are trying to recruit retired teachers.
A district may be able to hire a teacher for less pay than teacher received before retirement. But the teacher, combining the new salary with the retirement pay, may make $20,000 to $30,000 more per year than before retirement.
Jordan District last week drafted recruitment letters and paid the state retirement office to address them to about 480 teachers who retired in the past few years, said Bevan Wasden, West Jordan area executive director.
The district just lost 260 teachers -- three times last year's number -- who took retirement as of July 3 to avoid planned reductions in retirement benefits.
Utah schools will need more than 44,000 new teachers -- a 23 percent increase -- by 2014, according to the Utah Education Supply and Demand Study issued last winter. Fast-growing districts may need up to 60 percent more teachers.
Factors in the high demand include Utah's enrollments are expected to grow by 28 percent and more than 46 percent of today's teachers will become eligible for retirement in the next decade. Meanwhile, many college graduates are taking jobs elsewhere or are not working in the field.
"We don't know the reason for (Granite District's) shortage, but we do know through the universities, there are less students graduating in education," said Donnette McNeill-Waters, Granite associate director of human resources.
In Jordan, newly hired retirees are paid as if they have only 11 years experience. But they also continue to collect state retirement and benefits money going to a 401(k) and can make $20,000 to $30,000 more than they made before retirement, Wasden said.
"They look at the dollars and say, 'Whoa, I could be making that much?"' Wasden said. "(We benefit from the) wealth of experience and expertise they can bring to our system, and they can benefit from it financially."
He said about 40 retirees were hired before the letters went out.
The law requires retirees wait six months before returning to the school district from which they retired, or go to a different school district, said Laura Black, executive director of the Jordan Education Association.
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Information from: Deseret Morning News, http://www.deseretnews.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
