Education Week - January 12, 2022 - 14

tions they believe they can't endure
much longer.
School bus drivers in at least 12
states have withheld their labor
through a strike or sick-out this school
year, according to an Education Week
analysis of local media reports. Drivers
are typically looking for better pay,
more-robust benefits, and more support
dealing with the chaotic behavioral
challenges that can arise on a bus
full of rowdy children.
Among principals and district
leaders who say they're raising wages,
slightly more than one-fifth say
they've increased wages by more than
10 percent.
The Wake County school board in
The School Staffing Crisis
Won't End Any Time Soon
By Mark Lieberman
Staffing shortages that have been
crushing schools for months-with
frequent absences and unfilled openings
for teachers, instructional aides,
bus drivers, custodians, substitutes
and more-are getting worse, not better,
new survey results show.
With uncertainty around COVID-19
persisting nearly two years after the
pandemic began, these problems
appear likely to remain a fixture of
K-12 education for the foreseeable
future, district leaders and school
workers say.
Slightly more than half of 497 principals
and district leaders who answered
a nationally representative
EdWeek Research Center survey between
Nov. 17 and Dec. 1 said staff
shortages in their districts are getting
worse compared with the start
of the school year. Another 37 percent
said the shortage challenges have remained
the same since the school
year began.
" Educators are beyond tired and
finding it difficult to navigate the
daily struggle of not having enough
staff and substitutes to adequately
cover buildings on a daily basis, " said
Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent
of the Slate Valley district in Vermont.
Three of the district's 200 teachers
have resigned in the past two weeks,
either taking jobs in higher-paying
districts in nearby New York, or leaving
education altogether, Olsen-Farrell
said.
Administrators are now looking
into hiring teachers from outside the
country, but securing work visas " is
a cumbersome process, " she said.
In the meantime, Olsen-Farrell has
warned parents in recent weeks that
the district might have to shut down
in-person learning at some point if
staffing nightmares persist.
Fourteen percent of principals and
district leaders who answered the survey
said their school or district has
shut down in-person instruction at
least once this school year.
The most common culprits are
COVID-19 exposures and outbreaks
among students or staff, according
to the survey. More than half of
principals and district leaders who
had to close schools did so because
COVID-19 exposures and quarantines
led to staff shortages, according
to the survey.
At the 25-student Fort Ransom Elementary
in rural North Dakota, an
aide who was hired this school year
quit after a month because she and
her elderly mother both contracted
COVID-19, said Steven Johnson, who
is consulting for the one-school district
after recently retiring as its superintendent.
" I
do not know when this will end, "
Johnson said.
School districts are
snatching up workers
from neighboring districts
Longstanding hiring challenges
and unprecedented pandemic pressures
have converged this year to
create a perfect storm of challenges
for districts trying to restore K-12
schooling to a sense of normalcy.
Students are enduring long wait
times for school buses, fewer options
for school-provided meals, disjointed
classroom instruction, and inadequate
specialized services as employees
in the building scramble to fill
numerous roles beyond their typical
duties.
According to preliminary data from
the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics,
job openings in state and local
education-a category made up of
K-12 schools and other education positions-ticked
up from 261,000 to
299,000 between September and Oc14
| EDUCATION WEEK | January 12, 2022 | www.edweek.org
tober. Both figures exceed the comparable
figure from last fall, when
228,000 jobs in state and local education
were open. The number of hires
also increased during the same period,
from 127,000 to 164,000, according
to the BLS data.
Competition among school districts
for qualified employees is fierce.
At the 1,700-student Mountain Empire
district in Southern California,
a science teacher, an assistant principal,
and a high school principal have
all left for other districts in recent
months.
" None of them were actively looking
for positions, " said Superintendent
Patrick Keeley. All of them were
contacted directly by larger school
districts, he said.
Three weeks into the hiring process
for replacing the principal who quit,
no applicants have emerged.
" We are located within a 35-minute
drive from San Diego, so it's not like
we are a hard to reach location, " Keeley
said.
Only 6 percent of principals and
district leaders in the recent EdWeek
Research Center survey said they're
dealing with fewer issues around staff
shortages than they were at the beginning
of the school year, even though
that's the typical trajectory for K-12
hiring.
Employees expect more
compensation for their
demanding jobs
Competitive pressures in the labor
market have led many school districts
to raise wages this year. Fifty-two percent
of principals and district leaders
said they're using higher pay rates to
lure workers away from more lucrative
jobs at big corporations.
School employees across the country
also are sounding the alarm about
steadily worsening working condi6
5
37
52%
Less
severe
The same
More severe
N/A
*Results show responses from
principals and district leaders.
North Carolina last month approved
raises of up to 40 percent for its lowest-paid
workers. The minimum salary
for school support staff will now be
$15 an hour. Instructional assistants
will make $16.20 an hour, up from
$11.80, the Raleigh News & Observer
reported.
The vote to increase salaries came
amid protest from the Wake County
chapter of the North Carolina Association
of Educators, which advocated
for a minimum wage of $17 an hour.
The
salary increases will
last
through the end of the current
school year. The district will need to
scrounge up a new funding source to
extend them past that, according to
the news report.
Schools are looking to all kinds of
funding sources to fatten the paychecks
of the employees they're trying
desperately to recruit and retain.
The most common approach, according
to the survey results, is finding
money in the district's existing
budget. A third of principals and district
leaders surveyed who say they're
raising wages this year are using federal
funds to fuel those increases. Another
26 percent expect state revenue
increases to make up the difference.
Slightly more than one-fifth say
they're not sure yet how they're going
to pay for wage increases.
Staff shortages create other kinds
of funding pressures as well. North
Carolina districts have hired custodian
contractors to fill gaps among their
in-house cleaning staff, according to
Tony Messer, chief financial officer of
Chatham County Schools and president
of the North Carolina Association
of School Business Officials.
" The increase in cost for contracted
services can range from 10 to 25
percent, " Messer said. " Districts are
paying for this increase from lapsed
salaries from vacant positions and a
combination of cutting back on programs
and using (savings). "
Staff shortages affect students'
daily experiences as well as their longterm
relationship with school, said
Keeley, the Mountain Empire superintendent.
" If
students are seeing constant
turnover in their schools, it creates
barriers to forming relationships as
they begin to see the adults in their
schools as temporary in their lives and
may unconsciously put up barriers,
which can impede learning, " Keeley
said. " And unfortunately, right now,
there is a lot of uncertainty out there. "
For more data:
edw.link/StaffingCrisis
Compared to the beginning of the school year, staffing
shortages in my district are:
What is the biggest wage increase your district has
offered this year in an effort to fill staffing shortages?
22
26%
5
14
21
6 6
More than 10%
9-10%
7-8%
5-6%
3-4%
1-2%
Less than 1%
*Results show responses from
principals and district leaders
who reported that their districts
raised wages for any employees
this year in an effort to help fill
staffing shortages.
SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center survey, November 2021
iStock/Getty Images Plus
http://edw.link/StaffingCrisis http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - January 12, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 12, 2022
