Busload of applicants AND District loves saying, 'You're hired'

While the School District of Manatee County has struggled to keep its support positions filled over the past few years, the turnout at the June 20 Support Staff Job Fair seemed to indicate an increased interest from job candidates.

Wendy Mungillo, the director of personnel for the district's Human Resource Department, said 75 to 100 applicants is a good turnout for the district's job fairs. Of that number, approximately one third make it to the end of the hiring process with a job offer.

However, the June 20 job fair at the Wakeland Support Center in Bradenton had 180 applicants. The district offered 59 of those who applied a job, Mungillo said.

Among the opportunities at the job fair were positions for bus drivers, food attendants, custodial staff and paraprofessionals.

The school district typically hosts two to three support employee job fairs each year to make up turnover. This job fair was even more critical for the district, which next semester is opening three new schools, including Parrish Community High School, Barbara Harvey Elementary School in Bradenton, and Dr. Mona Jain Middle School in Lakewood Ranch.

The new school openings have fueled the need for bus drivers and bus aides. Mungillo said the district needed 45 bus drivers and 50 bus aides going into the job fair. During the fair, six applicants were offered bus driver positions and 19 bus driver aide positions were offered. 

The district also was in need of 45 food service workers, with almost half of that number due to the need in the three new schools, according to Regina Thoma, the director of food and nutrition services for the district. Thoma said 24 applicants were offered food service positions during the job fair.

Besides the new school needs, many of the support positions being offered are hard to keep filled because of part-time status or split time schedules. 

“A bus driver is going to work a shift in the morning and a shift in the afternoon,” Mungillo said. “It’s usually like a six-hour (a day) position. Some of our food services positions are like that as well, we bring them in at five hours and move them into more full time as they come on board … some (positions) just aren’t full time, and people are looking for full time work.”

Palmetto resident Mary Ann White was one person who found the conditions to her liking as she walked out of the Wakeland Support Center with an offer to be a bus aide.

White, 69, retired in 2012, and has since worked off-and-on to bolster her and her husband’s retirement fund. 

She had hoped to be put in food services but was advised to pursue a job as a school bus aide. It was an unexpected but welcome development for White, who says she loves working with children.

“It’s going to be good,” White said of her new job as a bus aide. “I’m going to be with kids every day. I’ll try it and see how I do. Like everything else, it will work or it won’t work.”

The job fair is set up so district employees can perform interviews and make decisions on the spot, so applicants could receive a job offer the same day. The district also was set up to do drug tests that day on site. Mungillo said the idea was to make sure the applicants didn't lose interest in the job through a long process.

“We have several steps of finger-printing and drug testing ... we try to eliminate everything we can once a person has an offer,” she said. “…It’s trying to grab them and hold onto them … in this world, people don’t wait. They’re onto the next thing. 

Thoma said the school district will continue to interview and hire candidates on a weekly basis.