Teacher staffing shortages are being addressed
The high demand continues for one of the most in-demand professionals across all lines of education — teachers.
According to EducationWeek’s article, Staff Shortages in Schools are Here to Stay, there are a variety of reasons affected by several factors. These range from private employers offering more money, flexible hours, and appealing benefits to the availability of qualified personnel.
Possible impacts
A higher student-to-teacher ratio can have a great impact, including such concerns as larger class sizes with more limited individual student attention, teachers taking on additional responsibility and experiencing burnout and job dissatisfaction, impact on students’ academic performance, fill-in teacher quality, and strain on school budgets due to incentives offered to draw new staff members.
Maria Solis, Lone Star College-Tomball director of the continuing education and alternative teacher certificate program, said the teaching profession is facing challenges of high turnover rates across K-12 classes. These are exacerbated by employees retiring as well as not enough young people entering the profession.
The top three teaching vacancy rates in public school are:
• special education,
• English as a Second Language, and
• computer science, according to Solis.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than half of public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods (55 percent) had at least one teaching vacancy, compared to 40 percent of public schools in low-poverty neighborhoods, Solis said.
Specialties affected
Shortages are impacting higher education in the area in other ways. San Jacinto College’s Wayne Wauters, manager, talent acquisition-human resources, added that shortages tend to be in specialized fields at their college.
The primary focus is health care, especially nursing, and technical areas such as information technology professors and instructors.
What are some other key areas? Company-certified auto mechanic instructors, professors for their education bachelor’s program, and other technical areas, such as process technology, instrumentation, truck driving, and diesel mechanic instructors are also challenging to keep filled, Wauters said.
Looking for good solutions
So, what’s being done to address the teacher shortage?
Education agencies are stepping up to assist, according to Solis, which begins with awareness about the exceptional value of teachers as recommended by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to the Secretary of Education.
“This is by developing its Elevating Teachers strategy time frames, milestones, and performance measures to gauge results. They also recommend the secretary of education should direct federal student aid and the Offices of Elementary and Secondary Education and Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to collect resources that address the key challenges contributing to teacher shortages,” Solis said.
“Developing programs to pair new teachers with experienced educators to help newcomers better transition into teaching is a way to help retain teachers.”
Maria Solis, Lone Star College-Tomball director of continuing education and alternative teacher certificate program
Using key platforms
Wauters said San Jacinto College is using platforms such as Circa, LinkedIn, Indeed, HigherEdJobs, attending local job fairs, and other means of networking to attract talent. Retention of these crucial staff members is also a concern.
“Our benefits are a key element to our retention strategy,” Wauters said. “We pay for the employees’ health insurance, and have generous holiday, vacation, and sick/ personal time. We review our compensation practices to ensure we remain competitive and make use of stipends and other types of compensation in areas requiring more than our standard pay table accommodates.”
Professional development opportunities are also presented at San Jacinto College, and an Employee Referral Program where employees can receive compensation for referring an applicant who is hired.
Solis added that streamlining and boosting teacher-preparation programs can help attract professionals.
“Developing programs to pair new teachers with experienced educators to help newcomers better transition into teaching is a way to help retain teachers,” said Solis.