4K teachers absent when schools start

State board finds rising shortage ‘alarming’

Just weeks before the school year started, Florida’s public schools listed more than 4,000 open teacher jobs, a vacancy increase of about 1,000 from last year, according to the Florida Education Association.

Even now, with the school year under way, schools across the state are still looking for teachers. Nearly 70 open teaching jobs were listed Monday morning, for example, on the websites for the Lake, Orange and Seminole school districts.

“We are very concerned about the growing teacher shortage,” said Cathy Boehme, a legislative specialist with the association, which is Florida’s statewide teachers union.

Boehme last week told the State Board of Education that she began counting teacher openings in 2016, tabulating school district needs at the start of August just as schools were getting ready to open. By that time, principals ideally want their faculty in place.

Two years ago, 2,400 open teacher jobs were posted on district websites at that time. That figure climbed to about 3,000 in 2017 and then to about 4,040 early this month, she said.

“This is a critical need we must address,” she said.

The day she spoke to the board she noted that there were teacher job openings in public schools from the Keys to Jacksonville.

Monday in Central Florida, there were postings for an algebra 2 teacher at Lake Mary High School and a language arts teacher at Evans High School, among others. Maitland Middle School needed a math teacher; so did Teague Middle School. Elementary schools from Casselberry to Leesburg to MetroWest were still searching for teachers for their kindergarten-to-fifthgrade classrooms.

The large number of vacancies in elementary schools is particularly worrisome to school leaders, because those used to be the easiest teaching jobs to fill.

“That’s alarming, in my mind,” state board member Andy Tuck said.

District administrators started citing that problem last year, saying Florida’s universities used to produce all the elementary teachers they needed, but because enrollment in education colleges has dropped, that is no longer true.

Richard Shirley, superintendent of the Sumter County school district, said more than 40 percent of his district’s new teachers this year come through alternative certification programs rather than the state’s education colleges.

“The teacher shortage, it’s real,” added Shirley, president of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.

The state’s public schools need more teachers in part because public school enrollment has grown, with more than 20,000 new students expected this year. But the bigger problem, many educators say, is that relatively low pay coupled with the state’s controversial 2011 teacher merit-pay law — which tied evaluations to student test scores — and other state policies have soured many people’s views of the teaching profession and led some teachers to leave long before retirement.

Boehme, Shirley and Michael Degutis, the chief financial officer for the St. Johns County school district, all told the board the state needs to look at improving teacher pay and adding incentives in order to encourage more people to enter, and stick with, the teaching profession.

Degutis, speaking on behalf of the Florida School Finance Officers Association, said teachers need a “livable wage.” He said the state should put the $230 million earmarked for the Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarship Program — a controversial bonus program tied to teachers’ ACT or SAT scores — into general schools budgets, so it can be used for salary increases and allow districts to get more benefit from rising property values.

Board members said they are concerned about the issue and may consider ways to help when they finalize their budget proposal next month.

Board member Gary Chartrand said Florida might need to consider programs that would forgive college loans, or even cover college costs, in exchange for teaching for a certain number of years.

“I think the teacher shortage is real, and I think it’s going to get a worse,” he said.

“The teacher shortage, it’s real.” Richard Shirley, Sumter school superintendent and president of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents