Official says state teacher shortage is worsening
Oklahoma’s top education official bemoaned the state’s teacher shortage Thursday as the number of emergency credentials reached a new high.
The state Board of Education approved 224 more emergency teaching certificates, which are issued to school districts that lack qualified candidates to fill teaching vacancies.
Nearly one quarter of the certificates (54) were requested by Oklahoma City Public Schools, the state’s largest district. Tulsa Public Schools requested 62 certificates or 27 percent of the total.
“The teacher shortage is not going to go away. It’s not going to fix itself,” state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said. “In fact, it is getting worse, and we have evidence of that.”
The state board approved 1,160 emergency certificates for Fiscal Year 2017, which ends June 30, breaking last year’s high of 1,063 by nearly 10 percent.
By comparison, the board approved 77 certificates last year at this time, Hofmeister said.
“That does not bode well,” she said. “We’re looking at a tripling of what we’ve had in the past. I’m very concerned.”
Hofmeister said between 800 and 1,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled and called on the Legislature to increase teacher pay in the next session.
Emergency certificates are awarded to people with a bachelor’s degree in another field who are working to become certified teachers. The certificates let them teach for up to two years until they complete certain requirements.
At its high point, Oklahoma City Public Schools employed 182 teachers with emergency certifications in the 2016-17 school year, which amounted to about 6 percent of its teaching workforce, said Janis Perrault, chief of human resources.
“In a district our size and in a major metropolitan area like OKC where we are fortunate to have a large population of college graduates, we are able to emergency certify a large number of individuals to teach in our schools,” she said.
Of the 54 certificates requested by the Oklahoma City district, 23 were renewals and 31 were new submissions, Perrault said.
More than 60 percent of licenses approved Thursday — 142 — are renewals, which permit a second year of certification because of a change in state law.
We don’t want to lose those folks,” Hofmeister said.
Board member Bill Flanagan pointed out that only 2 to 3 percent of Oklahoma’s 42,000 teachers are teaching without fulfilling all of the state’s requirements for traditional or alternative certification.
In other action
The board unanimously approved a $2.4 billion education budget for Fiscal Year 2018, which starts July 1.
Common education was one of the few agencies that had mid-year cuts restored to begin the coming year, said Carolyn Thompson, chief of government affairs for the state Education Department.
The Legislature appropriated $1.8 billion in funding for public schools, $92 million for public school activities and $462.6 million for health insurance, each amount slightly higher than last year.
For the second straight year no state funding was appropriated for textbooks and reading materials. Since $33 million was cut from last year’s budget, schools will have to absorb $66 million in the coming fiscal year to buy new textbooks and instructional materials.
Hofmeister was quick to remind the room that support of the public school activities budget took a $38 million hit for the second year in a row despite claims of flat-funding by lawmakers.
Last year, the board approved significant funding cuts to alternative education and early reading programs, while eliminating several others, including professional development and parent education.
In all, 38 programs were eliminated. While early childhood and reading sufficiency programs were among those partially restored for Fiscal Year 2018, many programs were not, Thompson said.
Hofmeister called the loss of $38 million in funding for programs that include teacher training and reading development “a staggering cut.”
“We look forward to the day when those funds are able to be returned and keep pace with the need,” she said.