SMMUSD HDQTRS. — There are more than 60 nonteaching jobs still available in the school district more than halfway though the year, a situation that has officials wondering how to accelerate the hiring of much-needed janitors, security guards and teachers’ aids.
“I am very disappointed” by the slow pace of hiring, said Emily Bloomfield, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School Board. “These are positions that provide critical support for our teachers and students. When we don’t fill them, we have to look outside for help, which can be costly … There needs to be an urgency in filling these positions.”
The lack of proper staffing levels throughout the school district is not due to funding issues, as it has been in previous years. The problem school board members face is that they have no control over the hiring process. That duty is left to the district’s personnel commission, a body independent of the school board that is in charge of advertising the vacancies, collecting job applications and conducting tests to see which nonteaching candidates score the highest and are the most qualified, according to the commission’s Web site.
Representatives from the commission — which has been criticized by the board and school officials for years — said they are not entirely to blame and have suggested the district’s own staff is dragging its feet when it comes to interviewing prospective candidates.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 8, 2006. Read the original PDF.