Fall job fair is new Lynchburg school division strategy to hire close to 80 teachers, support staff

Lynchburg City Schools staff will host a career fair Saturday to meet, interview and potentially hire candidates on the spot for dozens of vacant positions. 

It’s one strategy of many that LCS is using to expand its talent pool at a time when staff shortages are challenging schools state- and nationwide, said Tiffeney Brown, the school division’s chief human resources officer.

Typically, schools’ intensive recruiting window falls from February to April, Brown said, as they prep their roster for an upcoming school year. But LCS needs to fill a combination of 2026-27 roles and 2025-26 roles that were either never filled or have become vacant since the start of the school year, Brown said — and that demands a more creative recruiting timeline. 

LCS currently has 78 vacant positions, 37 of which are teaching positions that are being covered by substitutes, said Austin Journey, school communications supervisor. There are 1,558 staff members, including 620 teachers, currently employed by LCS.

Support staff positions are available in the school nutrition, facilities and maintenance, and transportation departments, Brown said, and a full list of available positions is on LCS’s job portal. Bus drivers are “one of our most urgent needs,” she added.

This is the first year that LCS — which includes 15 elementary, middle and high schools — will host a career fair in the fall, Brown said. She hopes that the timing gives the school division a unique opportunity to “get first view” of candidates who might otherwise consider working for different school districts when they host job fairs this spring. 

The fall job fair should also attract candidates who are graduating from college this December, Brown said, strengthening an existing pipeline of students from Liberty University, the University of Lynchburg and other local colleges who student-teach at LCS and are later hired. 

The fair will run from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday in the E.C. Glass High School gym. Each school will have a table where potential employees can talk with principals and department heads about open positions. 

Interviews and job offers may be given on the spot, Brown said, if a candidate’s qualifications match what administrators are looking for. Any offers given on Saturday are pending a background check and approval from the school board, she added. 

While the immediate goal is to fill current open positions, Brown said, she also hopes that the event helps LCS get on more residents’ radars for future opportunities. 

“We’re working to build a talent pool,” she said. “It’s helpful for us to make sure people know that we’re always hiring and that even if people don’t get an offer on Saturday, there’s constant turnover, so there’s opportunity for employment in the future.”

Creative coverage and ongoing recruitment

LCS isn’t alone in its hiring challenges. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 74% of U.S. public schools reported they had difficulty filling one or more vacant teaching positions before the start of the 2024-25 school year, which is the most recent data available. In the same dataset, 69% of schools reported having difficulty filling one or more vacant non-teaching positions.

As of June, more than 410,000 teaching positions across the country sat unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments, representing about 1 in 8 of all teaching positions nationally, according to the Learning Policy Institute. 

When there are open positions, LCS leaders either contract services from external businesses or rely on “dedicated folks who are willing to pick up extra,” Brown said. For example, she said, some teachers who have a commercial driver’s license have been helping bus drivers get students to events and activities after school and some substitute teachers have stepped up to fill teaching positions long-term. 

“It’s a success that there’s a lot of creative coverage that’s happening,” Brown said. “But we want to make sure that we have staffing so that we don’t have to stretch our workforce too far.”

Taylor Wisskirchen, a theater teacher at Heritage High School, said teachers in her building frequently cover classes during their planning periods to help out when there aren’t enough substitutes. While that takes away time that teachers normally use to prepare for class and can affect the quality of lessons, she said, it is also inspiring to see teachers find solutions to support the school. 

“It highlights the strength of our community,” she said. “We are all stepping up to cover in the gaps.”

Looking out for LCS is “in my blood,” Wisskirchen said. She attended Heritage from 2016 to 2020, and her great-grandmother, aunt, mom, stepdad and stepbrother all work or have worked as teachers in the district. 

Now in her third year working at Heritage, Wisskirchen said she finds new reasons to love teaching every day. 

“I have a student that literally hides in his hoodie in class every day, and he came and performed and had the time of his life,” Wisskirchen said of the haunted house that Heritage’s Acting I students recently ran. “It is moments like that that are like, ‘Wow, this is what it’s all about.’”

That positive impact is just as important in the halls as it is in the classroom, said Gretta Ford, head custodian at E.C. Glass. High school can be a stressful time in a child’s life, she said, with changing friend groups, overwhelming peer pressure and the stress of nailing down plans for life after graduation all weighing down day-to-day activities. Ford sees her job as an opportunity to “make people feel at ease and at home.”

“I lead by example,” said Ford, who’s known by students as the mayor of E.C. Glass. “Every day when you walk in here, you’re a role model.” She greeted students with fist bumps and high fives while sharing her story.

When Ford started working for LCS 26 years ago, she was just looking for a stable job that gave her insurance and the weekends off, she said with a chuckle. It’s grown into so much more, she said.

“I learn from these kids every day,” she said, whether that’s picking up new trends or practicing simple Spanish vocabulary to interact with students who use English as a second language. She’s also mastered skills she never imagined she’d know, she said — from the ins and outs of HVAC systems to the communication and organization expertise that’s needed to run the high school’s team of nine custodians.

Ford said she hopes that more people “just give LCS a try” like she did — and stay, like she did.

LCS’s pay starts at $50,000 a year for teachers and $17 an hour for support staff, according to a press release for the fair. Statewide, the average starting teacher salary is $48,666, and the average support staff hourly pay is $16.58, according to 2025 data from the National Education Association.

After Saturday, recruitment initiatives will continue, Brown said. Her team is working on introducing LCS to prospective employees outside of Lynchburg and developing new retention initiatives as the school year progresses. And the next job fair, scheduled for Jan. 31, will be here just in time for the start of the 2026-27 recruitment season, she said.