COLOMBIA, SC (WIS) – South Carolina has lost about 170 a month in the past four months, according to new research by the Educator Retention and Recruitment Center.
Teachers say they are not leaving just because of the pandemic: they say they have reached their limit.
There are approximately 515 open positions, which is actually an improvement over the beginning of the school year. This can be for a number of reasons. Professors and researchers behind the report say there could be fewer vacancies because vacancies were filled, classrooms were combined, vacancies were filled quickly, or substitute teachers began to fill full-time.
“It is not a one-to-one ratio,” said Jennifer Garrett, one of the leading researchers in this study on comparing open positions with leaving teachers. “These districts are filling vacancies as the year goes on, as teachers are leaving vacancies, [districts] we’ve been working on it all year, ”added Garrett.
Garrett said his team did this study to get a better idea of the impact the pandemic had on teachers leaving, but found that districts could not tell them what percentage of COVID-19-related exits.
She said the final numbers cannot give her a clear picture of what’s going on in classrooms, partly because a similar mid-year study of matches was never done to compare that, so she encourages the community to take it. them in nominal value.
However, she said that more than 500 open positions and almost 700 teachers who left the classroom is not a positive sign for the greater teacher shortage in South Carolina.
Other experts add that we need to focus on the fact that open positions and exits are happening and where they are being reported.
New data from the University of South Carolina shows that the Lowcountry and Pee Dee regions have more than twice as many vacancies in the Midlands. The interior of the state has relatively fewer open points.
Tommy Hodges, UofSC’s executive associate dean for academic and faculty affairs, believes the data indicates that the issue needs to be addressed at the state level.
“We need policy-level decisions,” says Hodges. “One of them is to know that it is not uniform. Know that it occurs in your pocket that tells us that we can allocate funds specifically to specific areas to deal with teacher shortages. “
The teachers who left say between switching from face-to-face to virtual education, helping children learn and cope with the pandemic, providing technical support and feeling ignored by lawmakers or administrators when asking for more resources, this has become too much.
“When it became impossible to do the teaching part the way I love it, it really opened my eyes to how little teachers can be respected at times and how teachers can be valued,” said former English teacher Ashley Walker. “I had 14 year olds looking at me and saying that you are doing the right thing and that we are proud of you.”
Walker now works for a nonprofit education organization and said he is open to teaching again if he thinks issues such as salary increases and building renovations are resolved.
“It was like teachers were heroes for teachers to be selfish,” she said of the public’s perception of teachers last year.
Walker says more of his friends plan to leave the camp later this year for similar reasons.
Researchers say that the areas most affected by vacancies are mathematics and special education.
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