Young educators will teach for food

Part one of two.

Despite holding two part-time jobs, substitute-teaching and waiting tables, 27-year-old Bellmore resident Anthony Messina has what he considers to be a third full-time job, for which he receives no pay. For five years, Messina has been searching for a permanent teaching position.

With cuts to education and teacher layoffs becoming more common these days, Messina says his hopes of landing his dream job have diminished, but he is not giving up. “I’m always buying The New York Times” for the Classified section, Messina explained. “I’m always checking OLAS” — the Online Application System for Educators.

Messina is among a generation of young educators who are struggling to find full-time jobs as school districts strive to reduce spending and control property taxes, in part by reducing staff.

Certified to teach art, Messina earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Adelphi University in Garden City. He has spent so much time and devoted so much effort to searching for a job that he considers himself to be an expert in the field. He joked that he might have stumbled on a different career altogether — as a consultant for young teachers seeking work.

Tough economic times have made it harder to find jobs in almost any profession, but landing a teaching job on Long Island has become tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack, with thousands of well-qualified candidates searching for that needle.

Dr. Mara Bollettieri, assistant superintendent for personnel in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, estimates that she now receives 4,000 résumés a year. For the 2011-12 school year, the district hired fewer than 10 new teachers.

Richard Banyon, deputy superintendent in the Malverne School District, said he is seeing similar numbers. “When I first started in personnel back in the mid-’90s, if we had an elementary position and we advertised, we’d maybe get 100 applicants,” Banyon said. “Now if I advertise for an elementary position, I get 200 to 300 applicants.”

At the same time that many districts are cutting instructional positions, current teachers who are eligible for retirement are holding on to their jobs because of all the economic uncertainty, according to Dr. Maureen Walsh, dean of the Division of Education at Molloy College in Rockville Centre.

Pete Grogan, 35, of Oceanside, has been a permanent substitute teacher at Merrick Avenue Middle School for three years. Grogan said his search for full-time work “has been very difficult. It’s very narrow on Long Island. No one’s really giving up their job, even if they’ve been there for very long. And then when there is a job open, you become one of 500 applicants.”

Grogan, who is certified to teach social studies, said he takes pride in his work as a substitute, and stays after school to help out as an assistant coach for the football, wrestling and lacrosse teams. He is beginning his fifth year of searching for a permanent position, and he is beginning to give up hope of finding a job on Long Island. He recently began applying to school districts in North Carolina, where he said he might have a better chance.

At Molloy, Walsh said, she feels the pressure to ensure that her students are well prepared for the tight job market. “We are constantly telling our students that they have to be the best prepared, the most articulate, the best writers, the most professional-looking, and they have to really put their best foot forward in an interview,” she said.

There is an upside to having such a large teacher candidate pool with so few jobs: Districts are able to hire top young educators.

“The hiring side of the table definitely has the upper hand, since there are so many applicants out there,” Walsh said. “They’ll hire the best and the brightest. If they have a pool of 500 candidates out there for one third-grade teaching position, they can pick the person who is the teacher of their dreams.”

Messina and Grogan said they would keep searching for teaching jobs, because they believe teaching is their calling. Searching for a full-time teaching position “can be frustrating, but it’s not something you can really focus on,” Grogan said. “If I go into a classroom frustrated and upset, the kids will just be anxious, and that’s not worth it.”

Next week, part two: Landing a teaching job.
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