MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Monongalia County School System appears to have made progress on filling job vacancies for the 2024–25 school year.
As students begin their first week of classes, School Superintendent Eddie Campbell announced that seven secondary teaching positions are expected to be filled by the end of the week as part of a hiring blitz by the school system. This will follow 20 new positional hires that were approved by the Monongalia County Board of Education and coordinated efforts to hire more county bus drivers. With the majority of the teaching and staff positions filled for the 2024–25 school year, Campbell is confident that the school system will be able to run with full efficiency.
“We’re really pleased with where we are from a personal standpoint, we’re really comfortable where we are right now,” said Campbell.
According to Campbell, 65 positional hires were a part of job orientation ahead of the 2024–25 school year to go alongside the 20 hires that were approved by the BOE at their last regular meeting in August. A major catalyst for the hires has been the approach to hiring new employees, which now involves expanding job searches and reaching out to potential employees who live out-of-state. With the job recruitment efforts that started as early as February, Campbell feels they greatly helped avoid any large-scale teacher or staff shortages for the 2024–25 school year.
“We’ve had to up our game as far as teacher recruitment (efforts),” said Campbell on WAJR’s Talk of the Town. “We routinely go out, beginning in about February, to out-of-state teacher recruitment events that in the past just weren’t necessary for us,” he said.
Efforts also continue to hire more bus drivers for the school system, which appears to have shown significant progress over the past year. According to Campbell, substitute driver positions are still available, and full-time driver positions will still be accepted after routes were run by Monongalia County Schools Transportation Director Tony Harris during the last school year. While no routes are expected to be disrupted this year, he does encourage anyone who is interested in a substitute driver position with the expectation that they could be hired immediately and trained by the county school system.
“For our folks in the Transportation Department, it’s not uncommon now to get a full-time job right out of the gate,” said Campbell. “If you’re interested in driving a bus, contact our transportation department, we offer the classes right here, and we help with that financially,” he said.
While efforts to be more involved in teacher and staff recruitment were needed, Campbell added that once in-state and out-of-state workers began to see the pay and benefits offered by the school system, positions were able to be filled relatively quickly. While teacher and staff pay varied in competitiveness with out-of-state school systems, Monongalia County School System pay rates were either at the top or near the top in comparisons to other systems in the Mountain State, which has also positively influenced recruitment. With a board more than willing to address system hires when necessary, Campbell feels the system is in a position to best serve Monongalia County students.
“We still were the highest paid district as far as teacher’s salaries go in the state, both for service personnel and our professional staff,” said Campbell. “Our board has made a commitment to that, to make teaching here in Monongalia County attractive,” he said.