Most school districts in Clark and Champaign counties reported being currently fully staffed, but they are still experiencing the shortage overall with more staff leaving and fewer people applying for education positions.
Global Impact STEM Academy (GISA) Superintendent and Founding Director Josh Jennings said districts lose teachers for a variety of reasons.
“People move, they find a more desirable district based on what they deem is a better fit, family circumstances change, and some do simply leave the profession. The challenge is filling those positions once they become vacant,” Jennings said.
One of the bigger challenges, DiMauro said, is finding qualified staff, which he said is a national trend, and the pipeline is smaller than it used to be.
“An important indicator is to look at the number of college students choosing education as a major. Those numbers dropped about 50% over the last decade, and there are only about half as many students who are going into education programs at the college level than there were a decade ago,” he said.
Engage and retain
At Greenon Local Schools, they had 18 teachers leave their roles in the 2022-23 and 2021-22 years. Of those, 25% moved to administrative positions in the district, 15% retired and 60% left for other opportunities with higher-paying districts.
To help offset some of the challenges related to retaining staff and teachers, they created a staff engagement committee as part of the strategic plan to retain teachers.
“We added several new excellent staff and teacher professionals this 2023-24 year, and we look forward to ensuring Greenon feels like home and those individuals stay with us,” said Superintendent Darrin Knapke.
Triad Local Schools also recognizes the shortage, saying there are fewer people going into the profession and a lot of staff turnover and movement. Superintendent Vickie Maruniak said she had attended several job fairs where there are “significantly” fewer education graduates to choose from when hiring.
The Springfield City School District, with nearly 1,100 employees, had a one-year aberration with fewer staffing positions to fill this summer than compared to the past several years. For certified teaching positions, the district lost a total of 140 people over the last three years, but only nine this year compared to 61 last year and 70 in 2021-2022.
“In a district this size, it’s important to recognize that (we) will most likely never by ‘fully staffed’ and there will always be adjustments that need to be made, whether that be with long-term substitutes or other solutions,” said Jenna Leinasars, communications specialist.
Leinasars said, overall, the loss of teachers relates to the national decline in the number of people entering the teaching profession.
“Whether it be pay, the increasing number of responsibilities that are asked of teachers, the — at times — negative societal attitudes towards educators or a combination of all of these factors, teachers are choosing to leave the classroom in greater numbers than they have before or not enter education at all,” she said.
Quality concern
Urbana City Schools Superintendent Charles Thiel said with fewer newly licensed candidates available for openings, a larger percentage of the movement is coming from experienced staff members.
“I am very concerned about the ongoing ability to continue to find quality teaching staff moving forward. In the past when we usually would have many applicants for a position, now there are only a few. The limited pool of candidates makes it a challenge to ensure the hiring of good staff members,” he said.
Graham Local Schools Superintendent Chad Lensman agreed that is was concerning to “think about what school staffing could look like over the next 10 years.”
Union president DiMauro said the state and local districts need to encourage more people to go into education and follow the traditional path to get licensed or certified, which he said requires reaching out to students, sometimes before they go to college, to help them understand the value of education as a career. He said they also have to do more for people teaching as a second career and pay attention to diversity.
“It doesn’t mean lowering standards, but there are alternative pathways, such as paraprofessionals who do the work to become fully licensed without walking away from their job,” DiMauro said. “(Also), attracting a diverse teaching population that reflects the diversity of our students.”
There are more acute shortages in certain parts of the state and in certain jobs, DiMauro said, such as substitutes, bus drivers, special education and some advanced level classes.
Fewer applicants
GISA’s Jennings said the academy has been fortunate when compared with other schools.
“I know that a lot of schools are struggling in some very specific positions. However, we have been blessed to have little turnover and with the turnover we have had, we filled those positions,” said GISA’s Jennings.
Jennings said even though it’s a little hard to compare GISA to other larger districts, they have experienced the decrease in applicants.
“Prior to the pandemic, we would see a number of applicants for each position that we had open. Now we see very limited amount of candidates for each position we have open, once they do become open,” he said.
At Clark-Shawnee Local Schools, they struggle to find certified intervention specialists, as well as art teachers, even though they posted positions early and attended area recruitment events. Northeastern Local Schools has lost a few special education teachers over the last few years, which district officials said are harder positions to fill.
Other reasons staff leave include working conditions, leaving the profession early and money.
“Educators coming out of college make an average about 25% less than people with similar levels of education than other careers, and that pay gap has widened over the course of a couple decades. It’s hard to compete with when students have a variety of choices to make with other professions that pay a lot more in starting salaries,” DiMauro said.
Support to stay
Graham’s Lensman pointed out that it’s a teachers market, so it’s “important that schools provide competitive salaries and benefits along with ensuring that teachers are supported at all levels in the district.”
He said it’s “more important than ever that we are doing what we can to retain quality staff members.”
This aligns with what DiMauro said in that it’s both a recruitment and retention challenge.
“One thing that’s really critical is it’s not just having strategies for effective recruitment and hiring, but once teachers are hired to a district is that they have quality mentoring and successful support, and being mindful of the working conditions that teachers face,” he said. “When people don’t feel respected in their work, supported in their work ... they feel like they don’t have support in the community. Those are factors that push people out as well.”
In Springfield, the district’s human resources department has “amplified” its recruitment efforts and refined its internal processes to attract and retain qualified teachers and other staff positions, including revamping the onboarding process for new hires, restructuring HR departmental responsibilities to better serve employees, providing employee recognition incentives, and attempting to maintain competitive salaries, increase annual bonuses and enhance employee benefit offerings.
Clark-Shawnee works to make sure they are being “purposeful” to make sure staff feel valued and appreciated, including through the RECHARGE initiative and stations where they provide monthly opportunities for teachers and staff to experience appreciation and give them a moment to re-energize.
At Mechanicsburg Exempted Village Schools, they started a staff appreciation series that provides them with monthly tokens of appreciation including things like a monthly salad bar, customized salad containers, snacks, and staff events at home sporting events.
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