PSS job fair attracts retirees

The Public School System opened yesterday a two-day job fair, which has attracted many retired teachers wishing to rejoin the local teaching pool.

“We’re inviting the community to come and take a look at PSS as the place for teaching opportunity,” Education Commissioner Rita Inos said.

The job fair, which is being held at the Multipurpose Center in Susupe and is open until 4:00 PM today, is aimed at filling some positions vacated by teachers who either retired or resigned last December and those who are leaving their posts this summer.

PSS has 70 vacant positions, but Inos said the agency may not be able to fill all of them.

“I’m working with different schools to find out the number of teachers that we can afford to keep in PSS,” Inos said.

She said with realignment of staffing pattern, PSS hopes to meet the demands in every classroom.

Last January, for example, PSS pulled out some employees from the central office and sent them to classrooms.

To address funding shortage and potential layoff of classroom teachers, PSS did not renew the contracts of ungraded and clerical employees whose terms expired last May.

Inos said the agency’s concern right now is to meet an acceptable teacher-student ratio.

As of yesterday morning about 50 applicants have registered for inclusion in the PSS eligibility list.

The PSS job fair was the government’s first local teacher recruitment program, Inos said.

In the past years, recruitment of teachers had been done in the mainland US, Guam and the Philippines.

“I think this is quite successful,” Inos said of the job fair. “Some of the applicants are those opted to retire last December and are considering coming back, while others are new graduates with degrees in education.”

Some of those determined to be eligible would get their assignments, Inos said.

Inos said PSS wants to create an eligibility list that would last for one year, “so that every time we need to hire teachers, we could just go over the list.”

Inos said PSS wants to improve quality teaching by hiring “the most qualified persons.”

“When we say ‘most qualified,’ we refer to teachers who have expertise in the subject that they are going to teach. For example, we are placing a math teacher in a math class, or a science teacher in a science class,” Inos said.