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Schools

Thirty Hires Down, Three to Go

The school system is almost done hiring teachers for fall, including two that administrators hadn't anticipated needing.

Less than two weeks before the Ridgefield Public Schools academic year begins, administrators still need to hire three more elementary level teachers, despite not having budgeted for two of them.

These three positions are the last of 33 new hires the district needed to complete thoughout the summer, hiring faculty to replace retiring and resigning teachers as well as the new teachers needed to staff the full-day kindergarten program.

Two of those three teachers became necessary during the summer, because overall elementary enrollment is on track to exceed projections. As of Monday night's Board of Education meeting, there were 42 kindergartners enrolled beyond projections, necessitating adding a teacher each at Barlow Mountain and Branchville. 

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The schools budget had $100,000 salary contingency built into it, Personnel Director Karen Dewing said, but two average teacher salaries as currently calculated amount to $124,600.

That $62,300 salary average, used to budget, won't drop as much as administrators hoped entering the fall, because fewer teachers retired than anticipated, said Superintendent Deborah Low. She said that plans to pay for the additional teachers include using the "unused pieces" of full-time high school teachers who don't work a complete day and putting off hiring the newly-approved elementary school literacy teacher.

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There are candidate interviews set up throughout Tuesday afternoon for the three jobs, Dewing said. Even this late in the game—new teacher orientation is Wednesday morning—she said the district has a strong pool of applicants because there is a surfeit of elementary school teachers in the area.

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