NEW BRAUFNELS, Texas — While many school districts are losing employees, Comal ISD is quickly growing. 

With a new high school in the works, the rush to hire employees is underway. Jobs are open for teachers, bus drivers and janitors, just to name a few. At a recent job fair, there were 120 applicants that showed up to fill 150 positions available.

Robert Dominguez is searching for a job after being out of work for a while. He hasn’t worked as a bus driver before, but hoped to change that at the job fair. The pandemic has been rough for many people, including Dominguez.

“They told me they had all kinds of positions open. They asked if I want to be a bus driver and I said sure, why not. I’ve been unemployed for a while, and I’m trying to get back into the system. Trying to find some work,” said Dominguez.

Comal ISD has a total of 31 campuses. Back in 2012, enrollment in the district was around 16,000 students. The district is located between two major cities in the state, San Antonio and Austin.

“You kind of look at every five years, we’ve added about 5,000 students. So, here in the next four to five years, we’ll be at 30,000 students,” said Assistant Superintendent Steve Stanford for communications at Comal ISD.

Stanford said they did not experience a loss of teachers like other school districts might have. In fact, they average an increase of 1,000 students per year. 

“We’re a fast growth district. One of the fastest growing districts in the central Texas area. Even during this pandemic year, we exceeded our expectations on the number of new students that we were going to get,” said Stanford.

Dominguez said as someone who lives in New Braunfels, he’s noticed the growth first hand.

“Oh God, the traffic. Don’t get me started. The traffic’s crazy here,” said Dominguez.

Even though Dominguez said the traffic can be unbearable at times, he hopes to be driving students in a big yellow bus when the new school year begins.