Urban school districts paying parents to drive their children to class. Four-day school weeks in rural towns. Long-term substitute teachers and “acting superintendents” who stay in their posts for years.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the nation’s public schools have spent $190 billion in federal relief on creative methods to replace departing K-12 teachers, bus drivers and administrators. Nationwide shortages in key support staff, administration, elementary school, special education, math, science and foreign language roles have persisted as the academic year winds down and the federal money runs dry.
The Department of Education reported last month that 67% of public school districts responding to a survey said they must fill “multiple teaching vacancies” before the next school year begins. About 59% said they also must fill nonteaching roles this summer.
The numbers are up from a similar survey before the 2022-2023 school year, said the National Center for Education Statistics. The Education Department estimates that 95,000 fewer employees serve public school students now than before the pandemic.
More than half the public school districts in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Nevada struggled to hire teachers this year. Officials say rising numbers of Spanish-speaking and special needs students, declining enrollments and burnout among faculty and staff added to recruitment struggles.
“Education has traditionally had shortages in certain subject and geographic areas, but they seem more widespread now and the challenge in filling them has gotten harder,” said David Griffith, an official at the National Association of Elementary School Principals. “We need to improve the appeal of the teaching profession [through] compensation, job satisfaction, support, status and reputation.”
COVID and government relief have brought lasting disruptions to the system.
According to an analysis of federal data by Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, most of the nation’s 14,000 public school districts have added teachers and staff while losing students since locking down their campuses in March 2020.
The center found that public school enrollment fell by 2.3%, or 1.1 million students, to 46.5 million from the 2019-2020 to 2022-2023 school years. Over the same period, full-time staffing increased by 1.5%, or about 97,000 people, to 6.4 million employees.
“The federal government dropped life-changing money on schools and gave them three years to spend it, resulting in a hiring frenzy,” said Marguerite Roza, an education finance expert who directs the Edunomics Lab. “After three years of districts clamoring to hire new staff with their federal dollars, they’ve now made a U-turn to balance their budgets as the money dries up this summer.”
Ms. Roza said the hiring boom added thousands of counselors, classroom aides and tutors to large, multicultural school districts in low-income areas. Those schools reported the sharpest enrollment declines but received the most stimulus funding.
While national public school enrollment dropped by 2%, or 450,000 students, from 2016-2017 to 2022-2023, it fell by 7.3% in California, the Edunomics Lab found. Ms. Roza said districts in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles must now rely on attrition, layoffs and “pink slips” to reduce payrolls before August.
Vacancies for unpopular jobs have nevertheless persisted in several struggling districts over the past year, forcing administrators to improvise:
• Parents in Chicago Public Schools could receive up to $500 monthly to drive their children to class after a shortage of bus drivers left more than 5,000 primary school students without rides in the fall. The School District of Philadelphia has offered $300 monthly.
• In Arizona, one of several states where one-quarter of teaching jobs are chronically open, school districts filled about 4,000 of their 7,500 vacancies this year through an “alternative pathway” that certified adults without classroom experience to switch to teaching careers.
• More than 150 of the nation’s 3,000 largest public school districts are seeking superintendents to start work in July, according to the K-12 school tracking website Burbio. In the meantime, districts are relying indefinitely on long-term substitutes. Bainbridge Island School District in Washington state has appointed an interim superintendent for 18 months as the system searches for a permanent superintendent.
• The Associated Press estimated that nearly 900 school districts shortened instruction to four days a week during the past school year because of insufficient staffing. That was up from roughly 650 districts in 2019.
• As of October, the National Center for Education Statistics found that 42% of U.S. schools put nonteaching staff in the classroom because of shortages. About 40% expanded teachers’ duties, 28% increased class sizes, and 24% shared teachers or staff with other schools.
• More than one-third of schools told the center that they must hire staff in general elementary, special education, math, language arts, classroom support and bus transportation this summer.
Hard lessons
Education experts say grade schools have been especially shorthanded in recent years as they enroll growing numbers of bilingual and special education students.
Primary schools now ask teachers to meet “the diverse needs” of students in ways that can be “extremely time-consuming and mentally taxing,” said Susan Fumo, assistant superintendent of human resources for Freeport School District 145 in rural northwestern Illinois.
“Elementary classroom teachers are clearly struggling the most,” said Ms. Fumo, who noted that her district enrolls 3,500 students from “diverse backgrounds.”
Schools at all levels have struggled to attract teachers with math and science degrees, said Pam Grossman, vice president of the National Academy of Education, a nongovernmental organization.
“People with degrees in STEM have many higher-paying career options to choose from, which makes it difficult to attract and retain teachers in these fields,” said Ms. Grossman, an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
In Colorado’s Mesa County, about 250 miles west of Denver, District 51 has started several hiring initiatives, including financial bonuses, expanded outreach to international applicants and a $10,000 salary increase over the past three years.
Andrea Haitz, a mother of three who serves as president of the school board, said the district had “more openings in general education this year” than in the past.
“Special education, secondary math, secondary science, culturally and linguistically diverse [teachers] and school counselors are the most difficult to fill,” Ms. Haitz said. “I think, in general, it’s harder to fill all positions since the pandemic.”
Public schools also have struggled with an exodus of families that switched to private education and homeschooling during pandemic lockdowns. Advocates say many of those families have no intention of returning their children to public schools.
“Teachers and students are leaving government schools in droves, abandoning a sinking ship,” said Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education, a conservative parental rights group.
‘Alternative pathways’
With teachers in short supply, some administrators have redefined qualifications. Over the past three years, most states and school districts have spent public money on “alternative pathways” that allow candidates without education degrees to become licensed. They say these programs have kept classroom shortages from worsening further.
Florida lawmakers have allocated more than $3 billion to increase teacher salaries since 2020. The state has also established a program for retired military veterans and first responders without classroom experience to receive a five-year teaching certificate and a $4,000 hiring bonus.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has made the issue a top priority, a Florida Department of Education spokesperson said in an email.
In Arizona, Justin Wing, assistant superintendent of human resources for Mesa Public Schools, said the suburban district near Phoenix increased starting salaries significantly to attract in-demand special education and math teachers.
The school board voted unanimously last month to raise the salaries of returning teachers by 4% and other returning staff by 3%.
“We typically need to fill 400 to 600 certified positions annually,” Mr. Wing said. “We are currently in the process of hiring for next school year.”
School choice advocates have cheered the efforts to hire nonprofessional teachers.
“Much of the blame for any shortages rests directly at the feet of the teachers unions and teachers colleges, which together have squeezed the pipeline of talented and well-prepared educators by creating artificial barriers to new teachers entering the classroom while failing to provide them any meaningful preparation in their studies,” said Matt Beienburg, director of education policy for the conservative Goldwater Institute in Phoenix.
State policymakers say easing certification barriers has helped increase the number of people training to be teachers.
Over the past two fiscal years, Michigan lawmakers appropriated more than $1 billion to address educator shortages after spending nothing in previous years.
“Michigan’s efforts to address the teacher shortage, still a very significant issue in the state, have nonetheless begun to bear fruit,” said State Superintendent Michael Rice. “In the last five years for which data are available, the numbers of individuals in a teacher preparation program increased from 9,512 to 14,829.”
The Nevada Department of Education said in an email to The Washington Times that it had 2,958 vacancies for licensed employees in October. That included “critical shortages” in special education, elementary education, computer literacy, science and math teachers, school social workers, school nurses and school psychologists.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, and the Nevada state legislature “invested historic funding for public K-12 education during the 2023 legislative session,” the email said. “Teachers across the state are receiving pay raises of approximately 18% to 20%.”
Lindsay Record, press secretary for the Illinois State Board of Education, said a $45 million grant program helped 170 districts with acute shortages hire 5,399 teachers over the past year. She noted that Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, has proposed another $45 million investment next year.
“Funds have allowed districts to find creative and sustainable solutions to fill vacant positions and retain teachers,” Ms. Record said.
The federal government does not regularly track teacher quit rates, but the education journal Chalkbeat reported last year that more teachers left their classrooms after the 2021-2022 school year than before the pandemic in eight states: Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington.
Public schools in most states have reported upticks in depression, anxiety, violent incidents and campus safety concerns among students since reopening.
“I know a few teachers in the Chicago suburban area who have quit recently, and they tell me … that the lack of student discipline has become much worse since the pandemic,” said former social studies teacher Christopher Talgo, a research fellow at the conservative Heartland Institute in Illinois. “I’ve also heard that the recent influx of migrants is wreaking havoc in Chicago-area schools. Teachers are scrambling to accommodate students who do not speak English.”
On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano said education officials have increased the number of school resource officers.
“We know the school system is doing everything in their power to make sure that our teachers are well compensated, trying to improve the climate of the schools, and trying to address school discipline the best they can,” said Ms. Giordano, a Republican and former public high school teacher.
More money
According to years of federal data, schools with higher percentages of poor and minority students struggle the most to hire and retain teachers.
The nation’s two biggest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have long supported using federal dollars to raise the pay for young teachers in challenging schools.
According to the NEA, the average public school teacher salary rose to $69,544 in the 2022-2023 school year. The NEA projected that salaries would grow another 3.1% in the past school year as New York, California and Massachusetts bumped their average annual salaries to nearly $100,000.
The Biden administration says some 30 states and the District of Columbia have raised teacher pay since 2021, partly because of the federal relief flooding the system during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“To support COVID-19 recovery, the administration secured $130 billion for the largest-ever investment in public education in history through the American Rescue Plan provided to more than 15,000 school districts and secured nearly $2 billion in additional Title I funding to date; both funding streams can be used to support teacher salaries in our most underserved schools,” the White House said in a news release last month.
Critics say many jurisdictions did not spend the flood of funds wisely and failed to prepare adequately for the day when the money spigot was turned off.
Too many school districts used that money for “ill-advised” hiring sprees, said Virginia Gentles, director of the Education Freedom Center at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum.
“Many districts spent the temporary funds on permanent staff. At the same time, public school enrollment was plummeting due to families leaving public schools, moving away and having fewer babies,” Ms. Gentles said. “Now districts will need to lay off teachers because they will have to face the budget adjustment realities that accompany enrollment declines.”
As they prepare for layoffs this summer, public schools should prioritize the diversity and quality of teachers over their seniority level, said Heather Peske, president of the nonprofit National Council on Teacher Quality.
“They can also set policies to protect teachers from layoffs in specific shortage areas like special education, STEM subjects, teachers of multilingual learners, teachers in hard-to-staff schools, or schools designated for support because of low-performing status,” Ms. Peske said.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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