HCPSS Provides Certificated Staff Hiring Update Ahead of School Year Start

August 22nd, 2023

The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) is readying for the start of the school year and is continuing the hiring process to fill remaining certificated staff vacancies. The system is well ahead of the previous year at a similar time. The system currently has only 53 certificated staff vacancies, resulting in a current fill rate of 99%. At a similar time last year, HCPSS had approximately 25% more certificated vacancies.

“I am very pleased not only with the number of staff that have been hired for the upcoming school year, but as I have interacted with our new educators, I have experienced the high quality of individuals who will be joining us and welcoming students into our schools next week,” said HCPSS Superintendent, Dr. Michael J. Martirano. “We put great effort into making sure the Howard County Public School System is a desirable place to work, including providing competitive pay and benefits, and the relatively low number of remaining vacancies is a testament to the quality of our county as a whole.”

HCPSS implemented several strategies to help ensure all vacancies are filled for the 2023-2024 school year, including:

• Offering over 350 open contracts to teachers wanting to teach in HCPSS. This is more than four times the number we were offering as little as five years ago.
• Holding three job fairs in June and July where staff provided support to candidates with application submission, credentialing, and determining if candidates met minimum qualifications. School administrators and programmatic leads were on site to interview candidates and several candidates were hired after coming to one of the fairs.

Additionally, many 10-month staff were temporarily hired to bolster the efforts of the Office of Human Resources to ensure applications and recommendations to hire were processed in a timely manner.

Students return to school in Howard County on Monday, August 28, 2023. Individuals interested in applying for current vacancies should visit the HCPSS website or contact the Office of Human Resources.