And the school staff who are still in the profession are facing burnout as yet another school year starts.
Shannon Cox, the Montgomery County Education Service Center superintendent, said her office is still trying to help multiple districts hire people to fill key positions. She said last year’s exodus was not as bad as this year’s struggles.
“We thought it was bad last year, and then we got to this year and then were like oh, no, no, this is bad,” Cox said.
The problem is exacerbated by the many retirements of long-time staff at many school districts in the last two years, but also by a pipeline issue: there are significantly fewer people going into teaching now than there were 10 years ago.
Some educators say there is an attack on public education, and what we’re seeing now is the result of years of bad policy. Others have tried to set up pipelines to get more high school students interested in education.
But one thing everyone agrees on is that this shortage isn’t going to be fixed overnight.
What teachers say
Amy Fugate, a former Huber Heights high school teacher and union president, retired from teaching this past year.
She said watching ninth graders blossom into young adults and going out into the world was “gratifying and fulfilling.” But the demands placed on teachers became too much.
It was also frustrating to get so many mandates from state-level officials who weren’t education professionals, she said.
“There were a lot of changes in expectations,” Fugate said. “There was a lack of support for helping us deal with the whole child because the kids are coming to us without all of the support from home that they need.”
Brian Cayot, a Centerville High School teacher and union president for the Centerville Classroom Teacher’s Association, said the demands and expectations placed on teachers in the last 10 years have taken a toll.
He said over the years, districts have gotten an increased amount of work for teachers and aren’t putting in funding for those mandates.
He pointed to the College Credit Plus program as an example of an unfunded mandate, which requires the high schools to allow their students to earn college level credits while still in high school.
“Which goes back to the ability to pay teachers, which goes back to the ability to attract and retain high quality educators,” he said.
He also noted the ongoing shortage of substitute teachers. Last year, he said he was frequently called on to cover other teachers’ classes during his planning period.
The state minimum wage for teachers is now $35,000. Pay varies by school district, with some districts’ salary scale topping out around $70,000, while others can go past $100,000 for the most experienced teachers.
Ohio Federation of Teachers union president Melissa Cropper said a survey done on teachers earlier this year showed how many frustrations teachers had, including dealing with discipline for students, state report cards and the amount of data they have to collect.
“We’re going to look at how we can restore more instructional time for teachers and give them back autonomy within their classrooms,” she said.
Dayton Public
Dayton Public, the region’s largest school system, has historically struggled to attract enough staff. That’s due in part to its urban environment, which comes with additional stress on teachers, and the number of staff needed to work in the district.
But staff said there were other struggles going on too.
Neil Mahoney, president of the Dayton Education Association, Dayton Public Schools’ teachers’ union, said additional mandates for Dayton teachers to constantly gather data wore on Dayton teachers, along with mental health issues among students.
He said more teachers are leaving the profession who are in the middle of their career, which can be hard on the youngest teachers. The 10-year and 15-year teachers might have better insights for some first- or second-year teachers than the 30-year teachers.
He said the new interim superintendent, David Lawrence, will improve administrative relationships with teachers and give them more support. The DEA is also emphasizing their internal mentoring system, where any teacher can mentor any other struggling teacher.
“When a teacher feels valued, that goes a long way,” he said.
Kenny Jones Jr., president of the paraprofessionals union at DPS, said a lack of respect and bad communication left many of his members frustrated.
Paraprofessionals are licensed and often have an associate’s degree. They typically work with special education students but can work with other students as well.
Paraprofessionals would be abruptly told they were transferring to a different school that was on an entirely different bus route to work, he said, and weren’t given a choice to stay.
But he said Lawrence has listened to them and the paraprofessionals union has signed a new contract with DPS, which would hopefully resolve some of those issues.
Jones said he stayed in part because he is the union rep, but also because of the kids he works with.
“Seeing the kids smile every day is a wonderful thing,” he said.
Pipeline shortage
According to data from the Ohio Department of Higher Education, between 2013 and 2021, the number of bachelor’s degrees in education awarded to students at Ohio’s public universities declined 13%, from 3,746 in 2013 to 3,202 in 2021.
In the same time period, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded at public universities in Ohio went up 14%.
But there are shortages in school staff across the board. Paraprofessionals, bus drivers, school nurses, school psychologists and hearing specialists are all in short supply this school year, as are intervention specialists and high school math and science teachers.
And everyone could use more substitute teachers.
Many of those jobs are in-demand outside of teaching too. Bus drivers in Ohio are required to have a commercial driver’s license, which is the same license needed to drive for Amazon and FedEx, or long-distance trucking.
Some districts are more impacted than others. As of late July, the districts who were advertising for the most teacher openings on the Dayton Area School Consortium website, which advertises for several school districts in the region, included high-need districts like Dayton Public, Springfield Schools, Jefferson Twp. Schools and Northridge schools.
But it isn’t just the districts with high need students who are seeing shortages. Centerville, a district with many resources, was advertising for a music elementary school teacher as of late July. Oakwood, another district well known for having high teacher pay and good benefits, was looking for two elementary school teachers and a kindergarten teacher.
Kari Basson, spokeswoman for Kettering Schools, said Kettering was able to find teaching and principal candidates this school year.
But she said the district is still advertising for paraprofessionals and aides and it’s been harder to get pools of applicants.
“Whereas pre-pandemic, we could easily have 100+ applicants for a teaching position and 50-60 for a principal position, today we are looking at less than half that number of applicants for open positions,” she said.
Brian Boyd, Department of Teacher Education chair at Wright State University, said the supply of students interested in going into teaching at Wright State has been steady.
But he said more districts are reaching out to him asking for students to long-term sub in their own classroom while finishing a degree.
“There’s a pretty stiff competition for employees,” Boyd said.
What can change
Novea McIntosh, a University of Dayton education professor, said building community is key in education. Teachers need building principals, college professors, mental health professionals and families to support children.
But she said UD is teaching their candidates to adapt to change, which helps them in the classroom.
“The idea is not new to them, of change,” she said. “The idea of using best practices is built into their curriculum, and it’s a part of what they do.”
Cox said some schools are discussing sharing some in-demand teachers through virtual teaching. Another teacher would be there to facilitate, she said, but a teacher from another district would be up on the screen teaching the content matter.
The idea is still coming to fruition, she said, but some districts are considering it.
Dayton Public, Trotwood schools and Mad River Local are working together on a program that would recruit future teachers from those schools as sophomores and send them to a participating local university. The students would then come back to teach at that school.
But there are systemic changes that need to be made too.
Cayot called on the state government to make changes to teachers’ work environments and give more funding to public schools.
“School districts kind of have their hands tied,” he said. “I mean, they’re required to implement the evaluation program that the legislation has set. They’re required to give the test.”
Without additional funding, it’s impossible to pay teachers more, he said, even if districts want to.
Mahoney said Dayton Public is working to make the schools the center of the community, by offering classes to adults after school hours and making the buildings available to the community.
“When you do those things, and there’s ownership, you’ll find that the problems teachers have to deal with are greatly lessened when the building is looked at as more of a community center than a government building,” Mahoney said.
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