With the city facing enacting a grim budget, the economic downturn is hitting all agencies The NY Times reports that, last week, the Department of Education "ordered principals to fill vacancies with internal candidates only...in an effort to cut costs and avoid teacher layoffs." Which means teaching school graduates, as well as teachers from Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows program, are now looking for work at private schools, charter schools or outside the city. Last year, the DOE hired 5,725 new teachers—about a third from Teach for America and the Teaching fellows programs, about two-thirds were from teaching schools. This year, aside from specialized positions like speech therapy, "principals can fill spots only with internal candidates, including teachers from a reserve pool made up of those whose jobs have been eliminated and many who have earned unsatisfactory ratings." A woman who left a non-teaching field to pursue an education degree at St. John's aid, "The stability in teaching was something that was I looking for. That has been turned on its head."