Kansas’ teacher shortage finally shows signs of shrinking.
But districts still can’t find enough educators to keep schools running under coronavirus safety demands.
“We were through the worst of it before all this happened,” said Mischel Miller, the director of teacher licensure at the Kansas State Department of Education.
Kansas News Service reports that new state data give schools plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the shrinking teacher shortage. Desperately needed special education teachers are finally showing up. More teachers are moving to Kansas than are leaving the state. And a larger number of Kansans ditched other careers for the classroom.
Yet keeping schools pandemic-safe requires more than filling long-open vacancies. Schools need significantly more teachers to make class sizes small enough for social distancing. And those hundreds of remaining vacancies are being filled with educators who fall short of the state’s standards meant to guarantee kids a quality education.
Teacher vacancies have been steadily growing in Kansas since at least 2017, before falling this year. New annual data from the Kansas State Department of Education shows 771 vacancies across the state, about 5% fewer than last year.
The state also saw other positive signs that it’s finally turning around its teacher shortage. State officials say Kansas universities are finally seeing more college students signing up as education majors. Schools had been seeing fewer and fewer potential hires at career fairs for years.
Special education teachers typically have been the hardest for districts to find. That’s still true in 2020. Still, the 157 open special ed teaching spots is a noticeable improvement to the 186 openings from last year.
Other teaching positions have gone in the wrong direction. Elementary teacher openings — traditionally easy spots to fill — went up 23% compared to last year. And while universities might be signing up more students for education classes today, 13% fewer Kansas graduates earned a teaching license this year.
At the same time, qualified teachers are reaching their breaking point working long and stressful hours during the pandemic. Education officials fear that by spring, the number of teachers who quit could erase any gains from the fall and make the shortage significantly worse.
“I’ve seen teachers in tears talk about leaving the profession and they’re exhausted,” Julie Loevenstein, a teacher in the Basehor-Linwood school district near Kansas City, told the state school board Wednesday.
Those vacancies don’t always mean teacher-less classrooms. The state counts any teaching spot without a qualified teacher as vacant. Many districts fill in those spots with uncertified teachers, like paraeducators, student teachers or substitutes without full-blown teaching licenses.
Salina Public Schools often relies on career and technical education teachers fresh out of the field they’re teaching and just starting to earn their license. While those former electricians and mechanics might be experts from their fields, they often have no training in managing a classroom or passing their skills on. The district said it would rather rely on licensed teachers, but often can’t find them.
“It’s always better to have had someone who has gained that experience so they come into the classroom ready to go at full speed,” said Eryn Wright, the head of human resources at Salina Public Schools.
Still, those unlicensed educators often have more in-the-classroom experience than a fresh college graduate. Dodge City Public Schools said the paraeducators and substitutes it used to fill its empty teaching spots have years of hands-on knowledge in the district.
