The hiring process at two of Jacksonville’s most important schools may get easier thanks to a bill from a local State Representative.
Near the end of the spring legislative session last week, House Bill 2377, sponsored by Representative C.D. Davidsmeyer, passed the Illinois Senate and is now headed to the desk of Governor Bruce Rauner.
The legislation extends the sunset date to allow the policy of direct hire to continue at the Illinois School for the Deaf and Illinois School for the Visually Impaired for another two years.
Davidsmeyer explains how this bill will help ISD and ISVI recruit top notch educators from around the country.
“When we’re competing to recruit teachers or trained staff, we’re actually competing with other states, and if our hiring process takes six or eight months, most of those people are going to other states. We want to make sure that we can recruit the best and brightest to our schools and this will hopefully allow us to do that without having to go through the long, burdensome CMS process,” says Davidsmeyer.
Davidsmeyer provides an example to show how the bill is advantageous for both schools.
“Just to put it into perspective, imagine if Jacksonville District 117 had a six-to-eight month process to hire a teacher and in Springfield it only took them thirty days, a lot of our teachers would be going to Springfield instead of staying in Jacksonville. So what we’re trying to do is allow ISD and ISVI to operate a little bit more like a normal school district would operate,” Davidsmeyer explains.
The legislation also allows Rehabilitation/Mobility Instructor and Trainee positions at ISVI to be directly hired until August 30th, 2019.
As for where the legislation currently stands, the bill has passed both houses and waits for the Governor’s signature, and according to Davidsmeyer, it will have Rauner’s support.
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