Tight labor market making it more difficult for Lawrence schools to fill positions

photo by: Nick Krug

Lawrence Public Schools district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.

A tight job market is making it harder for the Lawrence school district to fill vacant food-service, custodial and paraprofessional positions before school starts in three weeks, said David Cunningham, the district’s executive director of human resources and its chief legal counsel.

On Tuesday morning, the school district hosted a four-hour job fair at the district office for the positions. Three hours into the event, 10 people had signed up for initial interviews. That turnout was on track to be considerably less than the 25 who attended the inaugural job fair a year ago.

The turnout reflected an unemployment rate for Lawrence that the U.S. Labor Department placed at 2.9 percent in May, the last reported month.

In the current economy about the only people without jobs are those who don’t want them, Cunningham said. To make things worse, the district is fishing in the same small labor pool as the community’s largest employer.

“We’re in competition with KU,” he said. “That’s hard because they pay more.”

The district is in pretty good shape for the full-time custodian positions, but it does face an annual challenge of refilling many nine-month paraprofessional and food service positions, said Samrie Devin, the district’s human resource director.

The district started the day 45 to 50 short of the number of paraprofessionals it has budgeted for the 2018-2019 school year, Devin said.

The district usually has about 150 paraprofessionals to help teachers in regular classroom settings, to assist in computer labs, to work with students in special needs classrooms and to perform other duties.

The current paraprofessional shortage may sound bad, but the openings are spread out through all the district’s 21 schools, Devin said. She also knows that many applications will come across her desk when school starts and parents see help-wanted signs. Paraprofessional positions appeal to some parents because it allows them to work the hours and months their children are in school, she said.

Of course, wages also play a role. Cunningham said a recent study indicated that the district was behind the market on wages, compared with, say, wages paid in Johnson County districts. The Lawrence district then made adjustments. Entry-level food service workers start at $9.95 an hour, and paraprofessionals earn from $9.95 to $12.59 an hour, depending on their duties.

“We need to let that work a little bit and then evaluate it in a year,” Cunningham said of the adjustments. “We’re not planning to make any changes this year.”

Every employee working 30 hours a week receives health insurance benefits, Cunningham said. To help retain workers, the district extends those benefits through the summer for those who work only the nine-month school year.

Working as a paraprofessional can be a hard job, Cunningham and Devin said, but the district attempts to make it easier by finding the right fit for applicants.

Helping with that effort Tuesday were Margene Brohammer, associate principal at Lawrence High School, and Shaun Hanson, assistant principal at Southwest Middle School. There are seven open paraprofessional positions at LHS and about five at Southwest.

Paraprofessional positions offer the chance to work with children in a meaningful way, and that is a great motivation for some job seekers, Brohammer and Hanson said.

“We’ve heard some great stories today,” Brohammer said. “Everybody told us a story about a kid who was special to them, and it’s about making a connection.”

Jennifer Wilson left the job fair hopeful that she had found a position that would allow her to do just that.

A criminal justice major, Wilson attended the job fair to apply for a paraprofessional position at the Douglas County Youth Detention Center.

“I absolutely love working with teenagers and keeping them on the right path,” she said.

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