District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez is back in the classroom this school year, teaching math for students in sixth through 12th grades.
Before running for council in 2021, he taught at James Madison High School in North East Independent School District and had previously taught in the San Antonio ISD. He’d been considering substitute teaching to keep his skills sharp before learning about a new part-time teaching program SAISD launched this school year.
Now McKee-Rodriguez is back in the classroom about 11 hours per week, teaching geometry, pre-AP calculus and algebra at an SAISD school located in his Eastside district. To protect his students’ privacy, McKee-Rodriguez asked that the school’s name not be made public.
“It was kind of an impulsive decision … but at large, I’ve just missed the classroom,” McKee-Rodriguez said in an interview Friday. He posted a video of himself in an empty classroom on Twitter last week.
“Being in school part-time is an opportunity for me to maintain that connection with the community that first inspired me to run for office,” he added.
SAISD officials hope the new part-time teaching program will help lure more former educators back to the classroom at a time when many school districts are still struggling to fill large numbers of teaching positions.
At one point over the summer, about 800 of SAISD’s total 3,100 positions were unfilled, said Jill Rhodes Pruin, SAISD’s deputy chief of human capital management. Although most have since been filled, roughly 140 positions remain open, and many are being filled by long-term substitutes.
“We have people leaving the education field at a phenomenal rate, so we were trying to find a way to entice retirees to come back into teaching,” Pruin said of the part-time teaching program.
Retired teachers can work up to 92 hours a month without it impacting their benefits from the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.
Pruin said the part-time positions also have appealed to some younger teachers who can work only limited schedules, like McKee-Rodriguez, or parents who want to stay home with their own children part of the day.
Part-time teaching positions are aimed primarily at middle schools and high schools, which operate on block schedules that allow some scheduling flexibility. The district also is hoping to use part-time teachers to help with English as a Second Language instruction and special education — two of the greatest needs — where multiple teachers can divide the workload.
The part-time positions pay roughly the same hourly rate as the teacher would make in a full-time position, based on years of experience, Pruin said, but the positions are not eligible for benefits.
McKee-Rodriguez completed a master’s program in educational leadership at UTSA last year and has said he envisions a future after council trying to shape education policy from an unelected role. Last month he filed a council consideration request asking city staff to look into a homebuyer assistance program to help address the teacher shortage.
Should he return to teaching full-time someday, he said of his new role last week, “I won’t be completely taken aback by how different it is.”
Though he’s only been back a few days, McKee-Rodriguez said he’s enjoying spending time with young people, who he finds more sincere and earnest than the adults he works with as a politician.
“Kids are very honest in their tone and in who they are as people. … I’ve missed that in this setting,” he said.
Though only a few of the students have recognized him as their councilman, Pruin said McKee-Rodriguez’s name immediately stood out to the school’s principal, whose son had him as a teacher at SAISD’s Sam Houston High School several years ago.
“[The principal] knew his history, knew that he was a great teacher and wanted him to come to his campus,” Pruin said. “We are just so proud that he is wanting to come back and support our students.”
