For Many Teachers, a Famously Fertile Market Dries Up Overnight

Larissa Patel dreamed of teaching English at a Brooklyn public school this fall, motivated by a desire to help low-income children. But instead, on Friday, Ms. Patel spent the day filling out applications for 30 jobs at private schools.

Ms. Patel’s abrupt change in plans was precipitated by a new citywide ban on hiring teachers from outside the school system.

“Suddenly, overnight, I am rethinking my entire career,” said Ms. Patel, 30, a student at St. John’s University who left a job in the digital imaging industry to work as a substitute teacher and pursue an education degree. “It’s a very bleak point in time. It’s forced me to sort of look in a new direction.”

In an effort to cut costs and avoid teacher layoffs, the Department of Education on Wednesday ordered principals to fill vacancies with internal candidates only. As a result, aspiring teachers at education schools and members of programs like Teach for America — a corps of recent college graduates — and the city’s Teaching Fellows — which trains career professionals to become teachers — are scrambling for jobs.

Many are forwarding their résumés to charter schools and private schools; others are looking to the suburbs and across state lines. Some are reconsidering the teaching profession altogether.

“This was a pretty big bomb that dropped,” said Pam Ritchie, 43, a substitute teacher in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who had hoped the connections she developed would land her a permanent job in the fall. “I’m devastated.”

Ms. Ritchie was looking to leave behind the on-call lifestyle of a substitute teacher and finally have her own classroom with regular students and regular pay. “I have to stick with this until I get a job,” she said. “This is what I want to do.”

The Department of Education typically hires thousands of teachers for the start of school each September. In 2008, it hired 5,725 educators — 1,792 from the Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows programs, and 3,933 who, by and large, came from schools of education.

But this year, the department anticipates fewer openings and will not hire externally except in certain high-needs areas like speech therapy and bilingual special education. Instead, principals can fill spots only with internal candidates, including teachers from a reserve pool made up of those whose jobs have been eliminated and many who have earned unsatisfactory ratings.

Schools that opened in the past two years and are still expanding their ranks are also exempt from the hiring restrictions, as are charter schools.

Vicki Bernstein, executive director of teacher recruitment and quality for the Department of Education, said the news came as a surprise to many prospective teachers who had considered New York City an attractive option because of its historically high demand for teachers.

Ms. Bernstein’s office informed job seekers on Thursday that some hiring restrictions could be lifted by the end of the summer if there was a dearth of internal candidates in certain neighborhoods or subjects.

“They should remain committed and flexible,” Ms. Bernstein said, “so when and if there are opportunities, they are poised to be considered.”

It remains unclear how long the ban on outside hires will last.

Teachers from traditional pathways like education schools are likely to suffer the most under the new hiring restrictions. The city still plans to hire about half the usual number of educators from Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows program, but it has not made similar guarantees for other teachers. (Breaking with past practice, however, the city will not pay the salaries of Teach for America and Teaching Fellows educators if they do not find jobs by the fall.)

Some teachers had already received informal offers from principals but now find themselves dusting off their résumés and backing out of housing arrangements.

As news of the hiring restrictions trickled out, many education school students left frantic messages for principals asking for work. Others fired off anxious messages to e-mail lists and online discussion boards.

Aida Sanchez, a student at Teachers College at Columbia University who hopes to work with children in Harlem, Washington Heights or the Bronx, said that it was unfair to give an advantage to educators from nontraditional backgrounds like Teach for America. Ms. Sanchez is waiting to see how the city’s school budgets look when they are released this month, but said she was considering getting certified to teach in New Jersey. In the meantime, she is pursuing certification in special education in the hope of being hired under the exception.

“I am really eager to go in the teaching direction,” she said. “Now it’s kind of like you really don’t know where you’re going to be.”

Joshua P. Stager, 24, a high school teacher in Oregon who is looking for work in New York City because his wife is starting piano studies at Manhattan School of Music in the fall, said the hiring restrictions did not surprise him, given the state of the economy. For the past several months, he has made a morning ritual out of typing “New York schools” and “budget” into Google and waiting for the headlines. On Thursday, he said, “I had a little freak-out moment.”

“I’m opening up to the possibility of not getting an education job,” said Mr. Stager, adding that he and his wife had started limiting expenses as a precaution.

On Thursday, Ms. Patel, the St. John’s student who hopes to teach English, made a final pitch to principals at her four dream schools in Brooklyn. They said they did not have openings. Until she finds a permanent job, Ms. Patel plans to continue as a substitute.

“The stability in teaching was something that was I looking for,” she said. “That has been turned on its head.”