COLOMBIA – Hundreds of public school teachers in South Carolina have quit their jobs since the beginning of the school year, pushing pre-pandemic shortages beyond the crisis level and making it even harder to keep up with students.
More than 500 places remain in K-12 schools until February, according to the Winthrop University Recruitment, Retention and Advancement Center (CERRA), which released an update mid-year for the first time.
“Districts are in survival mode now and are probably not tracking why their teachers are leaving. They are just trying to fill vacancies right now, ”said Jennifer Garrett, an analyst at CERRA. “If the pandemic had not happened, I think it would be a little more optimistic, but it will have a lasting effect. “
After years of reports on worsening teacher shortages, CERRA appeared to have a bright spot in its initial report for 2020-21, with fewer teachers leaving their positions between the last academic year and this one. The nearly 6,000 who left for various reasons, including retirement and changing schools, represented a minimum of five years.
However, fewer hires during the summer led to an increase in vacancies. The 699 vacancies at the beginning of the school year represented an increase of 26% compared to 2019, according to CERRA.
Its February update brought more bad news, with 677 more teachers resigning in the past six months; 515 vacancies are what remains after district officials fill as many vacancies as they can, many with long-term replacements and combined positions.
Mid-year departures are of particular concern, as they indicate that teachers are so eager to leave that they are willing to risk losing their teaching license, at least temporarily, by breaking the contract.
“We are having a teacher hemorrhage in this state,” Patrick Kelly, a professor who lobbies the Palmetto State Teachers’ Association, told a February 25 panel of the House.
Kelly asked lawmakers to “halt” the search for ways to recruit and retain teachers.
“Our students suffer when there is no teacher,” said the history professor at Blythewood High, who told lawmakers virtually a classroom that was empty because the school couldn’t find enough substitutes. “If we don’t do something about it as a state, we are not going to look at the one-year negative impact of the pandemic on our students. This will really be a generational impact.
“Ultimately, if we don’t have great teachers, we don’t have a great educational system.”
It is not known how many matches are directly due to the pandemic. This was not part of the CERRA report.
Legislative response
Lawmakers on both sides agree with Kelly.
“There is simply no substitute for a qualified, well-trained living teacher in a classroom that cares about his students,” said Greg Hembree, president of the state Senate of Education, R-Little River. “If we could increase the size of this army by 20 percent, this is what changes the situation for us. “
But what the Legislature will do about it, especially this year, is unclear.
Before the pandemic hit, lawmakers were willing to give each teacher an increase of $ 3,000. The $ 210 million cost would have represented the biggest single year increase in South Carolina teachers’ salaries ever. Instead, the Legislature froze state spending, even suspending the normal and negligible increase in teachers for another year of experience.
Legislation passed by the House and expected to pass in the Senate would spend up to $ 50 million to retroactively restore these salary increases.
Other proposals have zero chance of approval.
This includes a bill that aims to keep young teachers in the classroom, offering to cancel the college loan debt after they have taught at least five years in a South Carolina classroom, provided they have graduated from a state college.
Research shows that many teachers leave the profession in the first five years. According to CERRA, more than 40% of teachers who left their jobs last school year had been in a classroom for five years or less.
A House panel testified on February 24, but when its members heard it would cost about $ 31 million per 1,000 teachers in the first year alone, the response was laughter from members of both parties. However, they indicated that they may be open to similar and less costly incentives once the economy improves.
“It’s an interesting idea, but it can be a little too expensive for us,” said Rep. David Weeks, D-Sumter.
“Particularly at this time when we are struggling just to maintain the status quo and keep up with expenses,” added panel chairman Rep. Garry Smith, R-Simpsonville.
Kathy Maness, director of the Palmetto State Teachers’ Association, asked the legislature to consider ways to forgive teacher loans after the state emerged from the pandemic.
“We are experiencing a crisis of teacher shortages in South Carolina at all,” she said, noting that they used to be confined to certain subjects and grades. “When we are unable to find elementary and early childhood teachers in South Carolina, we are in a crisis.”
When she talks to new teachers in her orientation, one of her main concerns is paying off her student debts, “and you know that teachers don’t make a lot of money,” Maness told the panel. “This can be a way of retaining teachers.”
It would build on the state’s existing loan forgiveness program designed to find teachers for positions that have been difficult to fill for decades.
Teachers who work at a school with a turnover of 20% or more may have their student loans erased in three to five years, depending on what they teach. It has long been a problem that teachers often move to a better-performing or less rural school after staying long enough to have their loans forgiven. But, like the scarcity problem, turnover is also getting worse.
Almost a third of the state’s public schools – or 416 – have teacher turnover rates in three years of at least 20%. This represents less than 10% of schools four years ago.
What districts are doing
School districts are trying to increase their own pipeline with programs that encourage aspiring teachers, who are likely to return home to work after graduating.
This includes programs like TeachCharleston, a three-year program that involves high school students taking classes to prepare for jobs in math and science teaching, as well as English for students learning the language – positions that are particularly difficult to fill .
Since starting in 2018, 37 high school students have applied, said Bill Briggman, head of the human resources department at Charleston County School.
This is a small number for the state’s second largest school district. But it all helps.
“We are discovering the need to develop our new teachers and we are really adopting an intentional strategy for more black teachers because we need more diversity in our schools,” he said. “We have 50,000 students in our own backyard.”
The South Carolina Parent-Teacher Association is also concerned about the long-term impacts of schools with understaffed staff. Its president, DeVane Trigiani, believes that school districts should find local solutions as legislative efforts diminish.
In the past two years, the House and Senate have passed very different versions of the legislation with the aim of improving K-12 education, before the pandemic ended the session in early March and made the whole process debatable.
“These effects are going to hit us in six, ten years. I just think we really need to go back to the table and decide that education is going to be a priority, and we are going to start in our communities, ”said Trigiani. “We’ve talked about this for so long that the action has slowed down and nobody knows what to do.”
