Las Vegas

The Clark County School District has reduced its teacher shortage by more than half by recruiting in Midwest cities that have laid off teachers or that have an abundance of unemployed teachers.

The school system was short 545 teachers as of Thursday, down from the 1,100 teacher shortage just a month ago. The district's greatest shortages are for secondary math and special-education instructors.

Byron Green, director of recruitment for the district, said recruiters are snatching teachers from Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Buffalo, N.Y.

Detroit and Cleveland have recently had teachers layoffs, Green said. But the other Midwest cities offered Clark County "a surplus of teachers that want to find a teaching job," Green said.
From June 1 until the weekend of July 20, recruiters with the district will have traveled to Chicago and Buffalo twice, and had three visits in both Detroit and Cleveland, he said.

Green said the district has been recruiting six days a week during the summer. He hopes the teacher shortage can be reduced substantially by the time classes resume on Aug. 27.

The district began the 2006-07 school year short 344 teachers and had between 400 and 450 vacancies during the school year. The vacancies were filled by substitute teachers.