Declaring a Critical Shortage

Before declaring a critical shortage and hiring a PERA retiree, employers should do a thorough assessment of the candidate pool for open positions, such as teachers, school bus drivers, school food services cooks, paraprofessionals, etc. Here are questions an employer should consider before declaring a critical shortage for any eligible position:

• Is our school district defined as rural by the Colorado Department of Education?
• Did we post the job in a publicly available forum for a reasonable timeframe?
• Are we noticing fewer professionally licensed candidates applying for positions (that require a license) as opposed to prior school years?
• Was there a vacant position that we were unable to fill at the beginning of the school year?
• Did we hire a long-term substitute, alternative or emergency candidate to fill a position we were unable to hire for?
• For the non-teacher positions, did we have to hire someone without the necessary skills or qualifications to fill the position?

To be able to declare a critical shortage for a specific position there are steps an employer must take to meet the qualifications for that critical shortage designation.  PERA reserves the right to ask for validation of your critical shortage designations and suggests that you retain any documents that support your declaration.

The deadline to designate current retirees for critical shortage is September 1 of each calendar year. Any newly hired retirees must be designated within 30 days of their hire date.