Pasco County Schools hosts job recruitment event at Brooksville park

Pasco County Schools set up its hiring pitch at Tom Varn Park in Brooksville, using a familiar Hernando County gathering spot to court workers who may want jobs closer to home. The district invited local residents to stop by from 9 a.m. to noon and talk about openings across its schools and support operations.

The recruiting effort pointed to the district’s scale and the range of jobs it is trying to fill. Pasco County Schools says it is the district’s largest and most diverse employer, with about 10,000 employees in hundreds of instructional and non-instructional positions. Its recruiting pages list openings for teachers, bus drivers, network technicians and food service personnel, a spread that shows the district is hiring not just in classrooms but also in transportation, technology and cafeteria operations.

For Hernando County residents, the Brooksville location carried its own meaning. Tom Varn Park, at 301 Darby Lane, is named for Thomas Leland Varn, a Brooksville-born coach, city council member and mayor who helped start Brooksville’s first Little League team and later coached Hernando High School baseball to the 1967 Florida state championship. Holding a job event there tied a public-sector hiring push to a place many locals already know from youth sports and community events.

The outreach also fit a tight regional labor market. The CareerSource Pasco Hernando region, which includes Hernando and Pasco counties, reported unemployment of 5.0% in December 2025, above Florida’s 4.4% rate. Pasco County’s unemployment rate was even higher, at 5.5% in January 2026. Those numbers help explain why a school district would bring recruitment across the county line, especially for jobs that can appeal to people looking for steady work without a long commute.

Pasco County Schools has also been recruiting in other parts of its district. The system advertised a separate Teacher Job Fair at SkyBrooke K-8 in Lutz on March 18 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., underscoring that it is actively shopping for workers across multiple locations. Applicants can use the district’s online hiring portal, and people with questions about recruitment events can email work@pasco.k12.fl.us. Hernando County School District also maintains its own recruiting and employment pages, a reminder that nearby public employers are competing for the same pool of education and support staff.