| Greenville News
This story has been updated with more information on teacher turnover.
Mandy Lloyd wakes up at 5 am every day and immediately starts responding to emails from her high school chemistry students.
Sometimes, she finishes converting face-to-face lesson plans into virtual ones for her students online. Then she drops her son off at school and is in the classroom at Greenwood High School at 7:30 am
Educators feel that the stress of teaching multiple class times is one reason many of their colleagues are quitting.
South Carolina’s largest school district, Greenville County Schools, has already seen a 30% jump in the number of teachers resigning or retiring this year compared to the same period last year.
Lloyd’s hectic schedule is common this year for teachers, many of whom are dealing with ever-changing frequency plans and increased responsibilities because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Lloyd’s first class, she has a mix of students who attend every day and others who attend every other day. She checks her three computer monitors to teach on one, project her screen on the other and keep track of her virtual students on the third.
She should have a planning period after that, but she doesn’t.
She receives a stipend to cover a chemistry class at neighboring Emerald High School, where the professor left in the middle of the year. An adult sits in Emerald’s class while Lloyd teaches them online in his classroom in Greenwood.
Then she takes her students to the cafeteria, where they pick up their lunches and bring them back to class to eat. Sometimes Lloyd eats, but often she doesn’t – she is very busy checking on her virtual students and making sure that those present are separated and wear masks when they finish eating, she said.
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She has two more classes before waiting with students until the buses are called. Sometimes, she stays after school to film herself completing the labs so that online students can watch. When she gets home after 5 pm, she teaches for the next day.
She usually receives emails and text messages from students at night with questions about assignments. She can’t afford to ignore them – she wants to help and, if she doesn’t respond, the messages will pile up the next day.
Lloyd is happy that Greenwood District 50 has not changed its schedule throughout the year, although that means teaching students on various attendance plans. She is more concerned with the stress that teachers across the state are feeling with additional responsibilities.
“My fear is that the more teachers, like me, continue to do the extra things, the more the state will demand unrealistic expectations,” said Lloyd. “Because we keep doing it, we keep pressing and persevering, but at some point, everything will fall apart around the state itself. Because we are at a breaking point.”
South Carolina’s teacher advocacy groups fear that stress is adding to the state’s already scarce supply of teachers.
“You are effectively being asked to be two teachers at the same time, trying to meet two different instructional models and needs at the same time,” said Patrick Kelly, director of government affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “These demands are really starting to weigh on teachers.”
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Kelly said she heard of teachers from across the state who are leaving the profession because of burnout and concerns about COVID-19.
“We know for sure that teachers are resigning because of concerns related to COVID,” said Kelly. “Either your own medical situation or the medical situation of those you care for.”
Superintendent Burke Royster said the Greenville County district is limited not only by teachers and substitutes, but also by nurses and bus drivers.
Teacher turnover at Greenville County schools in the past 18 months is still lower than two years ago, but the rise in layoffs and retirements this fall shows that the teacher dropout rate has increased compared to the fall of 2019.
The state had a shortage of teachers and bus drivers for years, long before the pandemic, but the teacher workforce was beginning to improve before 2020.
It did not help teachers’ morale when the state froze wages and eliminated the annual increase due to the impact of the pandemic on the economy. A proposed increase of $ 3,000 for teachers has also disappeared.
The recently released state Department of Education’s 2021-22 budget includes bright light in a dark year for teacher pay. The budget proposes to give teachers retroactively the step they missed this year, an additional 2% increase in salary and step step next year. But the General Assembly would need to approve the proposals for them to take effect.
Ultimately, Kelly is concerned that the challenges brought this year will diminish the gains that have been made in retaining teachers. One of their main concerns is how districts deal with teachers who drop out because of COVID-19.
When a teacher leaves in the middle of the year, districts can ask the state Board of Education to suspend their teaching license for violation of the one-year contract.
Greenville County Schools reported two teachers who cited COVID-19 as the reason they left for the state council. A spokesman said that both teachers were given completely virtual places, but declined.
Kelly said that some teachers who dropped out because of these concerns in York and Richland counties were also recommended for suspension by their districts.
“I really can’t understand why a district would try to suspend the license of a teacher who resigns because of problems related to COVID-19,” said Kelly. “For me, it is shortsighted and bordering on petty and inhumane – why would you try to stop someone from looking for a future job, once you feel safe returning to the job market, it is beyond me.”
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Kelly said it not only harms the teacher, but it also harms the districts because it reduces the number of teachers for the next year.
Steve Nuzum, professor and research director for the advocacy group SC for Ed, said that one major frustration he hears from teachers is that districts are not meeting their attendance plans they made this summer.
“There were these detailed plans, whether we like them or not, with these very specific metrics on the reopening, and most districts, when they started to have political reactions, just turned in a penny,” said Nuzum. “I think a lot of teachers think the rug has been pulled out from under them.”
Greenville County schools initially said they would not offer face-to-face classes if health officials said the county has a “high” spread of the coronavirus. The district changed those plans during the year because Royster said that the transmission of the virus is largely happening outside schools.
About 22,000 students are in the district’s all-virtual program. The rest of the students in the district will be present most days of the week in January. Elementary and high school students will all attend five days a week until January, when high school students will start attending more than three days a week.
But many teachers still fear being in classrooms with students as cases increase in the county and state.
“Teachers are afraid of their own health and really seem to be concerned with the spread of the community,” said Nuzum. “They don’t want their children to get sick and take it home to their parents and grandparents.”
Greenville County Schools are dealing with many more cases of coronavirus than when schools closed last spring. For the two weeks ending December 11, the district had a rate of 519.6 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, including virtual students and teachers.
If you take out virtual students and teachers, the rate of infection is much higher in the district, although Royster told school board members that it would be less accurate to compare that number with county infections.
Greenville County has led the state with infection numbers at a time when the school district and the state have registered more COVID-19 infections in the past few weeks than ever before.
In the meantime, concerned teachers in many districts are caught between breaking their contracts and going out in the middle of the year or staying in class despite their fears.
Ariel Gilreath is a vigilant reporter with a focus on education and family issues with The Greenville News and Independent Mail. Contact her at [email protected] and on Twitter @ArielGilreath.