Teacher burnout and the sparse number of substitute teachers combined with the continuing effects of the winter surge are pushing public school leaders to the brink of despair. Lawmakers are responding by temporarily rewriting hiring rules.
Gregory Bull / AP
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Gregory Bull / AP
Teacher burnout and the sparse number of substitute teachers combined with the continuing effects of the winter surge are pushing public school leaders to the brink of despair. Lawmakers are responding by temporarily rewriting hiring rules.
Gregory Bull / AP
In the past, when Cordelia Watson received an automated call to substitute teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, there was a specific scenario that included the name of the teacher she would be replacing for the day.
There’s so much revenue right now, and so many teachers complaining of illness or quarantine with COVID, that the system can’t keep up, she said. The messages often exclude any mention of a particular teacher.
Watson told NPR: “The call came in in the morning and the voice said, ‘We have a mission for … vacancy.’ “That means the actual teacher, who is trained, no longer work for the district and they have not been replaced.”
Watson, 25 and a substitute without a degree in Dramatic Arts, said “recruitment” calls are on the rise as teachers burn out and experienced substitutes give up this field. Meanwhile, fill-in requests have increased from a day or two on a single task to 20 days.
Those calls worry her and raise some red flags about what she can expect as a surrogate at the country’s second-largest school district. Unfortunately, Watson said, she sees no sign of ending the calls anytime soon as the district resumes weekly checks on all staff and students.
This week – for the first time since winter break – more than 65,000 students and staff tested positive for COVID-19 and that left officials scrambling to find substitute teachers and other staff.
The same is true for school systems across the country that are facing unprecedented shortages of qualified teachers. On top of that, the omicron variation and continued decline of the winter surge are pushing public school leaders to the brink of despair. Some have even appealed to parents with no educational background to take on long-term replacement missions.
The current crisis is also forcing state and local officials to temporarily rewrite the rules to make it easier to hire replacements and other needed staff.
Lawmakers rewrite rules to keep kids in school
Earlier this week in California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a executive order that speeds up the hiring process and gives schools more flexibility in staffing decisions, including allowing renewal of substitute teacher contracts and removing barriers for teachers who have recently been hired. Retired back to the classroom. The order will expire at the end of March.
Newsom said he hopes the move will be able to “keep our kids in distress safe for the rest of the year and get through this in the next three to six weeks.”
In Kansas, state officials are now getting teenagers without college experience to take charge of students. State Board of Education on Wednesday announced it lowered the requirements to obtain an emergency substitute teaching license as a “last resort.”
Under the new statement, alternative applicants will not be required to complete at least 60 semester credit hours from a regionally accredited college or university as they currently do. They will need to have a high school diploma, be at least 18 years old, pass a background check, have a verified commitment from the school district to employment, and submit a completed application to the state department of education. .
The measure is set to expire on June 1.
This week, Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson said some school districts are on the verge of new closures without enough staff to operate.
In the entire Kansas City metro area, teachers and administrators sacrificed breaks and lesson planning time to fill space. It’s a temporary halt that schools around the country have adopted in recent months.
Watson calls the current situation “the tip of the iceberg,” adding, “We’re on the front edge of this as we see it. This, I think, will help.”
Like KUT .’s Claire McInerny report, school districts across Texas – where schools cannot be funded unless they offer a direct option – Austin Independent School District “had 100 more sub-claims last week compared with the same week last year.” The nearby Hays Unified School District has run out of thin replacement rolls, and officials are now asking parents to be surrogates.
Florida’s Sun Sentinel report The Palm Beach County school district has 348 teaching spaces available as of October 4, compared with 221 open in 2020.
The problem is so severe in Broward County that in November, students from multiple grades without a teacher had to stock up together in the cafeteria, auditorium, or gym. In such cases, it is not possible to give any instructions so students are given assignments to complete on their own or asked to watch movies.
Justin Katz, president of the teachers union in Palm Beach County, told the Sun Sentinel: “We have these vacancies due to a lack of replacements who still don’t want to come in to deal with the educational problem of the time. COVID times”.
Oregon education officials are trying to attract new replacements by dropping the college degree requirement. The new rules also waive fees for educators that would place any associated costs on the school district or charter school. Candidates must pass a background check and submit for fingerprinting. Emergency permits obtained in the state will be valid for six months.
The substitute is not a babysitter
But having only one adult in each classroom is not the same as having a teacher in the classroom, Watson said.
“It doesn’t mean the students will actually learn anything. It just means they have a babysitter,” she said.
Watson says she’s pleased the governor has stepped in but doesn’t expect the recently announced changes to have much of an impact on LA Unified. Even before the latest round of statewide rule changes, the district was asking surrogates to extend contracts for up to 20 days in any given class.
“I’m going into a class where students have never been assigned by a certified teacher and we’re starting the second semester,” she said.
That constant disruption has put a lot of stress on the children and adults sent in to try to keep them on track. Just before winter break, Watson was called in for a three-week assignment teaching a high school art class to over 40 students for several classes.
“I don’t know what they know or what they did and I have to give them the final score. It’s just an impossible situation,” she said exasperatedly.
The constant rotation of new people also causes serious behavior problems, she commented, noting that classroom management has become one of the most difficult aspects of the job for her. and many of her colleagues.
“They are different now,” said Watson, describing the children she has taught for the past two years. “They are good and they are tough.”
“On Thursday, I had other school staff come and sit in class and support me because it was … too much for me,” she said.
“This is definitely not what I signed up for when I first applied,” Watson said, explaining that her first day on the job was two weeks before the statewide shutdown in March. 2020.
She was there when educators were called in to accommodate distance learning. She stays there when students return to face-to-face learning. But now she says, “I think it’s time to have an honest conversation about what parents want their kids to get out of school. Do they really want them to get an education? Because of that. not occur.”
