Schools nationwide cope with severe teacher shortages

HARTFORD, Conn. — Principals, superintendents and counselors are filling in as substitute teachers in classrooms as the surge in coronavirus infections further strains schools that were already struggling with staff shortages.

In Cincinnati, dozens of employees from the central office were dispatched last week to schools that were at risk of closing because of low staffing.

The superintendent of Boston schools, Brenda Cassellius, tweeted that she was filling in for a fifth-grade teacher.

San Francisco’s superintendent, Vince Matthews, has called on all employees with teaching credentials to take a class.

“This is the most challenging time in my 36 years as an educator,” Matthews said Thursday during a break from filling in as a sixth-grade science teacher. “We’re trying to educate students in the middle of a pandemic while the sands around us are consistently shifting.”

Staff absences and the surge driven by the Omicron variant have led some big districts, including Atlanta, Detroit and Milwaukee, to switch temporarily to virtual instruction.

Where schools are holding the line on in-person classes, getting through the day has required an allhands-on-deck approach.

“It’s absolutely exhausting,” said history teacher Deborah Schmidt, who was covering other classes, including physics, during her planning period at McKinley Classical Leadership Academy in St. Louis.

In a school year when teachers are being asked to help students recover from the pandemic, some say they are dealing with overwhelming stress just trying to keep classes running.

“I had a friend say to me, ‘You know, three weeks ago we were locking our doors because of school shootings again, and now we’re opening the window for COVID.’

It’s really all a bit too much,” said Meghan Hatch-Geary, an English teacher at Woodland Regional High School in Connecticut. “This year, trying to fix everything, trying to be everything for everyone, is more and more exhausting all the time.”

Labor tensions have been highest in Chicago, where classes were canceled after the teachers union voted to refuse in-person instruction. But union leaders in many school systems have been clamoring for more flexibility with virtual learning, additional virus testing and other pandemic protections.

In New Haven, Conn., where hundreds of teachers were out each day last week, administrators have helped cover classrooms.

When her classroom aide did not show up for work Wednesday, special education teacher Jennifer Graves borrowed paraprofessionals from other classrooms for short stretches to get through the day at Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School — an arrangement that was difficult and confusing for her young students with disabilities.

“It’s very difficult to get through my lesson plans when somebody doesn’t know your students, when somebody is not used to working with students with disabilities,” Graves said.

Even before infection rates took off around the holidays, many districts were struggling to keep up staffing levels, particularly among substitutes and other lower-paid positions. As a result, teachers have been spread thin for months, said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Assn.

“All of these additional burdens and stresses, on top of being worried about getting sick, on top of being stressed like all of us are after a two-year pandemic ... it just compounded to put us in a place that we are now,” Pringle said in an interview.

Some administrators have already been helping for months in classrooms and cafeterias, filling in for sick and quarantining staff.

“We’re not in love with the circumstances, but we’re happy to do the work because the work is making sure that we’re here for our kids,” said Mike Cornell, superintendent of the Hamburg Central School District in New York, who spent time this fall on cafeteria duty.

In San Francisco, 600 of the district’s 3,600 teachers were out Thursday. Even with administrators, curriculum developers and teacher coaches filling in, there were not enough substitutes to cover all classrooms, and some classes needed to be combined, said Matthews, the superintendent.

Second-grade teacher Anna Tarka-DiNunzio’s school of roughly 200 students in Pittsburgh was among those that went virtual last week because of staff shortages.

Some teachers taught despite being sick with COVID-19, said TarkaDiNunzio, who was disappointed to hear critics characterize staffing shortages as the result of teachers arbitrarily taking off work.

“It’s not just people calling off. It’s people who are sick or who have family members who are sick,” she said.

The strains on schools might be even tougher if not for large numbers of students being absent themselves.

In New Haven, teachers say, classes have been only about half full.

Jonathan Berryman, a music teacher, said some of his students haven’t shown up for weeks. He worries what that will mean for the performance targets set for students and their teachers.

“Before Omicron came along, there was fairly smooth sailing. Now the ship has been rocked,” he said. “We get to make midyear adjustments in our evaluation system. And some, I’m sure, are wondering whether we should even be concerned about that academic progress piece.”