Rockwall ISD schedules May 28 job fair to recruit teachers, special education staff

Rockwall ISD is turning to a May 28 job fair to recruit teachers and special education professionals, a sign of how hard districts are still working to staff classrooms, student services and support programs in Rockwall County’s largest employer.

The district says it employs more than 2,000 full-time and part-time workers and serves more than 19,000 students across 23 campuses. That scale makes every opening matter, but the pressure is especially sharp in special education, where staffing directly affects classroom support, therapy services and compliance with student plans.

Rockwall ISD’s compensation plan is part of its pitch. For the 2025-26 school year, the district says it offers a starting teacher salary of $63,500, along with a special education stipend, a bilingual stipend, a critical need areas signing bonus and additional education stipends. In earlier hiring-event coverage, the district also promoted the BEST Program for first-year teachers, the Teacher Incentive Allotment, employee perks and extra pay for high-needs areas.

Special education roles have been singled out with some of the district’s strongest incentives. At a 2025 educator hiring event, Rockwall ISD listed a $5,000 stipend for ACE, Adult Transition, ECSE and BASE classroom teachers. It also offered a $4,000 stipend for speech-language pathologists, diagnosticians and school psychologists, plus a $2,500 stipend for SLP assistants and a $5,000 signing bonus for critical-need areas. Those incentives reflect how districts are using pay differentials to compete for scarce licensed staff.

Rockwall ISD says special education services are delivered through collaborative partnerships with parents and staff, a model that depends on having enough teachers, therapists and evaluators in place. The Texas Education Agency says it tracks educator employment, demographics, attrition and retention, underscoring the broader staffing challenge facing public schools. TEA’s Rockwall ISD monitoring report also shows the district remains under special-education compliance review under IDEA and related state and federal oversight, making the steady filling of these positions a practical necessity as well as an academic one.

District job openings are posted through Rockwall ISD’s jobs portal, as the system continues to position itself as a destination district while it competes for the teachers and specialists families across Rockwall County depend on.