Dive Brief:

• Dallas Independent School District is offering Oklahoma teachers significantly higher pay to move to the Lone Star State as it looks to fill up to 2,000 projected vacancies, The Norman Transcript reports, noting that a recent hiring seminar in Oklahoma City drew 70 teachers and netted 13 on-the-spot hires.
• The district is offering a starting salary of $50,000 for beginning teachers, while those with experience can make $57,000 a year, compared to Oklahoma's state cap of $46,000 plus benefits for those with a doctorate and 25 years of experience.
• In Oklahoma, teachers have been outspoken about low pay for years, and a reported $1.3 billion budget shortfall is anticipated to result in 5% overall school budget cuts.

Dive Insight:

Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told The Norman Transcript that Dallas recruiters were aggressively recruiting on social media. That's in line with a recent Pew study that found that 33% of Americans use social-media platforms, 35% of social-media users use platforms for job hunting, and 21% have applied for a job they found through social media.

In some districts, recruiters seeking out new teaching candidates are increasingly viewing the use of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as essential when finding prospects. The advantage is that the majority of younger candidates are already online and using various platforms, and younger candidates are generally more comfortable with tech, since they grew up online. 

Teacher salaries make a huge difference in recruiting, but it's not always the only factor. States like Hawaii now offer a starting salary of $35,324 to $53,394 for teachers with a bachelor's degree, and up to $63,665 for those with a Ph.D or Ed.D. Those numbers are slightly lower than the national average, yet Hawaii is one of the states with the highest costs of living in the U.S.

Oklahoma officials may want to consider home-grown solutions to teacher retention, like the ideas put forth by the group Educators Rising. The network is now aiming to build a pipeline that encourages high school students to choose teaching as a profession, and has adopted a "grow your own" approach.