Teach For America, a national recruiting group that places young professionals in classrooms with the most need, is growing its local footprint through way of South San Antonio Independent School District.
South San and the nonprofit recently entered into a partnership to fill district vacancies for the 2026-27 school year. Under the agreement, corps members, the name for Teach For America recruits — would commit at least two years to South San ISD, and the district can hire and place up to 25 corps members in its classrooms.
“This is a strategy I felt that would mitigate some of the vacancies that we’ve seen,” said Superintendent Saul Hinojosa. “It’s a great opportunity to increase our pipeline.”
South San currently has between 10-15 teaching vacancies, currently employing around 400 teachers and serving around 7,000 students. The harder to hire positions are usually for special education, bilingual education and sometimes secondary math.
Even though enrollment dropped by about 350 students since last year and Hinojosa shored up South San’s recruiting efforts, certain teaching positions can be hard to fill, like special education, bilingual education and advanced math.
Hinojosa took on the superintendent position last year, after the Texas Education Agency appointed him and a new board of managers to replace then-Superintendent Henry Yzaguirre and the elected school board. The takeover has prompted several shakeups and aggressive budget restructuring.
In his first few months on the job, Hinojosa restructured South San’s central office to free up $3 million for sign-on bonuses and stipends for hard-to-fill teaching positions.
South San ISD also has its own teaching residency program, partnering with Texas A&M University-San Antonio to train prospective teachers. Recruiting qualified teachers is still hard for most school systems.
“Anybody you talk to is in the same dilemma,” Hinojosa said. “So you got to be creative and come up with strategies.”
Interest in teaching from high school and college graduates has been the lowest its been in nearly 50 years. At the state level, teacher attrition rates have steadily increased in the last ten years, peaking after the 2022-23 school years and slowly declining ever since. First-year teachers leave at higher rates.
Shortages in qualified teachers usually force districts to turn to uncertified educators, which can have a negative impact on student outcomes. That’s why state lawmakers have turned their focus to teacher pipelines, recently passing legislation requiring school districts to phase out uncertified teachers in core subjects.
Passed during the 89th Texas Legislative Session, House Bill 2 is a massive public school funding bill requiring school districts to hire only certified teachers in foundational classes like math and language arts, giving school districts room to apply for exemptions and extend their deadlines to phase out uncertified teachers by the 2029-30 school year.
HB 2 also mandates pay raises for certified and experienced teachers, though its been criticized for leaving out mandated raises for other student-facing staff like counselors, nurses and librarians and for short-changing school districts on per-pupil funding, which has only increased by $55 in five years.
Lawmakers who defend the bill, largely Republicans, say it focuses on teacher preparation and retention.
As of Jan. 26, South San had 13 uncertified teachers in foundational classes across 14 campuses. Last year, South San had more than 30 uncertified teachers said Hinojosa, and the district recently asked for a deadline extension in phasing out its uncertified teachers, listing its partnership with Teach For America as part of the “plan for recruiting future pipelines of certified teachers.”
After finding promising recruits, Teach For America helps with the certification process, offering resources and scholarships to help get corps members ready to teach in whichever state they’re placed. The process takes about three months in Texas, which has one of the most regulated public education systems in the country.
South San plans to partner with Teach For America San Antonio for at least five years, paying the nonprofit $5,000 per corps member for recruitment, certification and training.
Teach For America in San Antonio
Teach For America was founded 36 years ago, and first set up in San Antonio in 2010.
More than a recruiting aid for school districts, Teach For America’s mission is to develop “extraordinary leaders to transform education and expand opportunity for all students.” The group has an ambitious goal: double the number of children who are college and career ready in the areas they serve by 2030.
Teach For America San Antonio recently launched a free tutoring pilot program called “Ignite,” which will be available to South San.
There are about 70 corps members in the San Antonio area and 70,000 across the country. The founding executive directer for the local branch graduated from San Antonio ISD, which is where Teach For America has the largest and longest lasting footprint in the city.
The nonprofit also works with a handful of charter school operators, including IDEA Public School, Compass Rose, Democracy Prep and KIPP. In the past, Teach For America has also worked in Judson ISD and Edgewood ISD.
“We look at the disparities and outcomes for education historically in communities like ours,” said Nick Garcia, executive director of Teach For America San Antonio.
South San is a small landlocked district on the Southwest Side of town. Nearly 92% of students are considered economically disadvantaged by the state, and 4 out of 14 campuses received an “unacceptable” rating from TEA.
The district has also gotten a failing academic rating of a “D” from the state for the past three years, but one of Hinojosa’s goals is to get South San up to a A-rating within five years. This was part of the reason the district was a good candidate to partner with Teach For America, Garcia said.
Education discrepancies warrant the “sustained attention of our nation’s most promising young leaders,” Garcia says. That’s why Teach For America also provides regular training and mentorship while its corps members are in their placements.
While applicants could be placed almost anywhere in the country, Teach For America considers location preferences, and most corps members end up working close to home.
There’s also no “hard and fast rule” on what recruits teach, going where there’s the most need: special education, bilingual education and advanced STEM subjects.
Approximately 70% of corps members stay on for a third year in the classroom, and graduates often go on to take leadership positions in nonprofit or political sectors.
One notable Teach for America grad is James Talarico, who is running for the Democratic primary in Texas’ U.S. Senate race against Jasmine Crockett.
Garcia credits Teach For America’s recruiting strategy, which targets “incredibly passionate, aligned, sort of achievement oriented leaders.
“Our most promising future leaders are undergraduate students who could go on to do anything they want, in tech or finance or medicine or business — we want them to consider teaching,” he said.
