American Canyon High School is hiring.

About 24 teachers will staff the new high school for the 2010-11 academic year, when the campus opens to freshmen and sophomores.

About 258 current eighth-graders from American Canyon Middle School will join 307 students now at Vintage High School to create the school’s first student body, according to Mark Brewer, the school’s new principal. The number, he said, doesn’t include students whose families are moving to the area.

District officials are launching an intra-district advertising campaign for the new jobs, including regional occupational program instructors, beginning Nov. 9.

Sharyn Lindsey, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, said the plan is for current teachers at Napa and Vintage high schools interested in transferring to American Canyon High to get first crack at the jobs. If more instructors are needed after the first round of hiring, she said, current middle school teachers at Napa Valley Unified School District campuses will be considered next, although recruiting qualified teachers with experience teaching high school is a priority.

In addition to teaching core classes, the new school’s instructors will also lead courses in drama and the visual arts, computer technology and maybe even robotics, Brewer said.

Lindsey said the district’s tentative hiring timeline includes interviewing prospective teachers during the first week in December.

Brewer said he and American Canyon High’s new teachers will join forces with one assistant principal and one counselor during the school’s opening year, but other positions are still “in flux.”

Staffing issues are “always a little difficult when you’re opening a new school,” Lindsey said.

Because the district’s new high school boundaries will come into play for the 2010-11 school year, it’s difficult to predict exactly how many students will attend each high school.

With American Canyon students for the first time attending high school in their home town, the boundaries for Vintage High School — where American Canyon teens attend high school now — and Napa High will change.

Some of next year’s freshmen in Napa who previously would have been destined for Napa High will instead go to Vintage. But some of the upper classmen at Napa will be allowed to finish their high school career at the campus where they started.

This complicates the picture of how many teachers could end up transferring away from Napa or Vintage and when, Lindsey said.

Regardless, Brewer said “interest is increasing dramatically” in the district’s teaching community about transferring to the new school.

Lindsey said that, depending on enrollment and because the district will add juniors to the campus mix during the 2011-12 school year, the district will likely need to increase staffing at American Canyon High School by spring of 2010.

“This is kind of a work-in-progress,” she said. “We will know that information after the first round of hiring and Christmas.”