New Orleans public schools brought in a significant number of new teachers this school year, but the system still has several hundred who aren't qualified to teach what they are teaching. In its continuing effort to reduce that number and to deal with a general teaching shortage, the Orleans Parish School Board is again hiring the Orleans Parish Teaching Fellows program to fill positions in the struggling system.

Considering the massive problems the system has had with keeping track of employees, it is wise to continue to use outside help for recruiting. The fellows program, begun last year by the New York-based New Teacher Project, proved its worth in its first recruiting drive.

Despite getting a late start, the program surpassed its recruiting goal for the current school year. The group guaranteed at least 125 new teachers and ended up providing 139. Twenty of those recruits have already left, but the system still gained 119 teaching fellows -- many of whom are classroom veterans.

Those recruits and the teachers provided by Teach for America combined for a sizable infusion of new talent into city classrooms. Teach for America has 118 teachers in New Orleans schools, and 71 of them are in their first year.

If the teaching fellows program can add at least another 125 teachers next year -- and if most of this year's fellows stay on -- the system will have strengthened its teaching corps considerably.

There is no more important task than attracting good teachers to city schools, and the School Board is wise to be aggressive about it. Would-be teachers have complained in the past that it was impossible to navigate the system bureaucracy. Despite a desire to teach in urban schools, some of those teachers gave up and took jobs in other school systems.

No system should allow that to happen, especially not a system in such dire need of new teachers.