Education Spotlight: Merced County Office of Education shares available job opportunities

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- In ABC30's segment, Education Spotlight, Action News Anchor Landon Burke will talk with Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) officials about some of the biggest topics in education.

Landon Burke spoke with the superintendent about careers in education available in the North Valley.

Landon: So, Dr. Tietjen, what can you tell me about these job opportunities?

Dr. Steve Tietjen: Well, there are lots of job opportunities in education right now. Of course, MCOE is one of the largest employers in Merced, and actually, most education agencies are the largest employer in their community. Whether they are a small community or larger like Fresno. Education agencies really hire a lot of people. We're a "people intensive business" and so, for job opportunities here at MCOE, I'd encourage people to go to MCOE.org. Click on "employment opportunities," or go directly to the Education website for employment which is "EDJOIN.org" or "MCOE.org" on our case. Just a quick kind of overview of what's happening in education employment right now, reports on our retirement system is that they're 20,000 fewer teachers teaching this fall. It's kind of a shocking number, but that's due to a large number of retirements, people that look like I do, my age, with grey hair, the baby boomer generation, is retiring. And the end of 2020 seemed like a good year for a lot of people. And so, we saw a lot of retirements in education, but there isn't. It's not just the classroom. It's also, in IT, it is in transportation, in food services, really, you name it, we probably have job openings on it. Not in just the classroom. But as you might guess, we are looking for teachers right now and so across the state across the valley. If you have a CBEST or if you not have not taken the CBEST and you have 90 units or more, you have a BA, and you are looking for something to do a few days a week. We are looking for substitutes across the Central Valley right now, and I'd encourage anyone that has ever considered teaching or farming as a substitute to consider it right now.

Landon: So what are the benefits of working for a school district or working in the education sector?

Dr. Tietjen: Well, you know the joke used to be "June, July and August." But yeah, that's not really true because people are working year-round. It's a very family-oriented job, holidays, you know, are always off. So another big advantage. But seriously, rates and pay now and education are very competitive to the private sector, and quite frankly, our retirement systems are a lot of ways, the best. For education, and health benefits are always a nice to have too and so full-time employment in an education agency means health benefits so lots of good reasons to come to work for Education Agency.

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