Education Week - July 13, 2022 - 14

How School Staffing Shortages Are Hurting Students
Essential nonteaching school employees
are in high demand, and when their positions
go unfilled, high-need students suffer most
By Mark Lieberman
The past academic year was a rough one for
school transportation in Monroe County, Ind.
Keri Miksza's daughter, an 8th grader, was
regularly arriving 15 minutes late for her firstperiod
math class during the first part of this
school year. She could drive to the middle
school by car in 10 minutes, but her daughter
regularly spent 45 minutes to an hour each way
on a bus so crowded that many students had to
stand.
" I never thought to ask, 'Hey, how crowded is
your school bus?' " said Miksza, who is the chair
of the Indiana Coalition of Public Education for
Monroe County. " You just assume everybody
has a seat. "
Drivers in the district doubled back two or
three times each day to cover bus routes. Parents
puzzled over when, or whether, buses
would pick up their children. Substitute drivers
squinted at handwritten descriptions of routes
they had never traveled.
In a single month, on average, 32 buses were
late at least once to their destination, and 10 of
those were late more than seven times, a consulting
firm hired last fall by the district found.
The average late bus was four to seven minutes
behind schedule. And the students most likely
to be late? Students from low-income households-the
ones whose parents didn't have another
way to get them to school.
It wasn't hard to understand the origins of
these problems. The district typically employs
120 bus drivers to transport roughly 9,000 students
to its 21 buildings daily. This past year,
only 80 of those staff positions were filled.
" We looked at, can we live with what we
have? " said Adam Terwilliger, the district's assistant
director of business operations. " It became
a matter of, it'd be educational malpractice. "
The plight of Terwilliger's district likely rings
true for districts large and small in all 50 states.
When schools lack adequate staffing, students
who need the most support suffer most.
Students with disabilities and English-language
learners lose out on or have less access to specialized
services. Students from poor families,
and rural students who live far from their school
building, lose convenient free transportation
and crucial learning time in school. And all students
who need extra academic help miss out on
instruction when teachers and support personnel
are stressed, demoralized, and absent.
Studies show that students learn more when
their teachers are less frequently absent; when
the ratio of nurses to students is lower; and, particularly
for students of color and students in
high-poverty schools, when teaching assistants
are present.
Staff shortages in one area have ripple effects
elsewhere. When buses can't run on schedule,
teachers fret about the safety of their students
finding other means to get home. When substitute
teachers aren't on deck, schools beset by
COVID outbreaks have no choice but to shift to
remote learning, trim school hours, or cut extracurricular
activities. When paraprofessionals
are hard to come by, teachers have to fill the
gaps while juggling their regular duties.
Plus, " You don't attract your best, most
competent people with poverty wages, " said
Joanna Miller, a school bus driver in Kalamazoo,
Mich., who serves as president of the Kalamazoo
Support Professionals union.
It's always been challenging for schools to hire
enough qualified teachers, instructional aides,
bus drivers, cafeteria workers, crossing guards,
and the other staff members who keep a school
day humming. But for many school and district
administrators, those challenges have never
been more daunting.
Shortages of qualified teachers regularly generate
headlines and draw comments from politicians,
as during a recent congressional hearing
on those subjects. But the discussions often
leave out the millions of other people in the K-12
workforce who are critical to the smooth functioning
of schools-and optimal learning for
students.
That workforce is frustrated, too. Three-quarters
of paraprofessionals, school transportation
workers, and other classified school employees
who answered a nationally representative
EdWeek Research Center survey in early May
said staff shortages are at least a medium-sized
problem in their district. Nearly 2 in 5 said staffing
is a major problem. Fourteen percent said it's
a crisis.
These problems show few signs of slowing
down. Slightly more than a quarter of surveyed
paraprofessionals and school transportation
workers said they're likely to leave the K-12 profession
in the next year. Of those, 70 percent
said pay was a major reason.
Raising wages isn't enough
Even after boosting wages and dangling benefits,
districts that never struggled to hire before
are finding a dearth of candidates for open positions.
Districts that perennially fall short of adequate
staffing levels are feeling the stress more
than ever. These problems haven't subsided
even as in-person schooling returned.
The Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union,
which covers four school districts in southeastern
Vermont, used to regularly get 50 applicants
for an open teaching position. Now,
" We're doing a happy dance when you see
something break double digits, " said Katie
Ahern, the supervisory union's director of student
support services.
Candidates for special education assistants are
almost impossible to find, she said.
Some of the obvious solutions to these problems
are proving insufficient.
The EdWeek Research Center survey asked all
respondents to list a percentage raise they could
get that would make them much more likely to
stay in their current job. The average answer was
20 percent. Respondents indicated a one-time
bonus of $2,219 would make them much more
likely to stay.
Most districts struggle to approach even a fraction
of that increase. District leaders in Denver
recently proposed increasing the minimum
wage for school employees from $15 to $20 over
three years-a far cry from staff unions' request
for a $33 minimum and annual 5 percent cost-ofliving
increases. Paraprofessionals in Madison,
Wis., recently walked out of work to push for a
5 percent pay increase, but the district so far has
only agreed to raise wages by 2 percent.
Wages and benefits make up 80 percent to
90 percent of most districts' annual operating
budgets. Compensation can only increase
as much as available local, state, and federal
14 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 13, 2022 | www.edweek.org
Students board buses at Frances Slocum Elementary School in Marion, Ind., where the school
district has struggled to fill open positions for bus drivers-part of the larger wave of staffing
shortages in schools.
funding will allow. Budget pressures from declining
enrollment and surging inflation are
shrinking opportunities for growing districts'
revenue. Short-term pandemic relief aid will
expire in two years.
In Monroe County, the district's starting salaries
for bus drivers were already higher than in
many other nearby districts.
" It's like a submarine underwater and you've
got four doors open, " Terwilliger said. " You
increase pay-that closes one of the doors, but
water just rushes faster through the others that
aren't addressed, " like outdated technology,
route complexities, and benefits.
Districts struggle to recruit in areas where
housing is scarce
Another major challenge for recruitment is a
nationwide deficit of affordable housing.
The Chinle school district on the Navajo reservation
in northeast Arizona is short 17 bus drivers,
24 teachers out of roughly 250, and two principals.
Housing is a major culprit in the highly rural
area, where some of the district's 3,200 students
regularly commute an hour and a half one way
to get to school. Quincy Natay, the district's superintendent,
said he's seen several instances
where the district hires someone new, they arrive
on a Friday afternoon in a U-Haul van, and
by Monday, they've changed their minds and
left.
" You're living right next door to where you
work, " Natay said. " If it's not nice, that can be
a distraction. "
The district owns 3,800 housing units, but
they haven't been updated in nearly 30 years,
and they're starting to fall apart. The district receives
federal funds through the Impact Aid program
to offset the lack of revenue from property
taxes, but housing doesn't qualify for construction
grants through that program, Natay said.
To find drivers, Natay's team has tried everything:
raising wages, fully subsidizing employees'
health insurance, offering sign-on bonuses
and retention stipends, and paying for new drivers'
license applications.
But no matter what they do, the reality doesn't
change. Some drivers defect to more-specialized
jobs in the construction industry, which pays better.
Others move off the reservation, or find employers
who take less money out of paychecks
for retirement funds.
The district gets transportation funding from
the state per mile traveled. With far fewer miles
traveled this year because of driver shortages
and some students learning virtually, Natay
will have fewer funds to spend on maintenance,
which is crucial in a district where buses travel
on poorly maintained or unpaved roads they
weren't designed for.
" The work seems to never end, " Natay said.
Jobs in schools are a tough sell
The path to improving schools' staffing woes
is steep.
These jobs are hardly getting easier. COVID
continues to spread and shows no signs of disappearing.
Millions of students have lost instructional
time and large numbers have experienced
acute mental health challenges that may take
years to address. High-profile school shootings,
while statistically rare, raise fears for some
educators about their safety. Political rancor is
escalating tensions in many communities, and
those tensions often spill over onto administrators,
teachers, and school staff just trying to help
students succeed.
Greg Tucker, an English teacher at Pajaro Valley
High School in Watsonville, Calif., always
thought he would retire several years after the
minimum age of 55. Now, at 51, he's struggling to
imagine staying longer than he has to.
The district, home to a major hub of agricultural
production, is seeing particularly sharp
staffing challenges in its elementary and middle
schools, Tucker said. Soaring housing costs in
the San Francisco Bay area are straining families
and educators alike.
The time Tucker spends in his regular classroom
remains fulfilling. But he frequently gives
up his preparation period to cover for another
class that has lacked a regular teacher all year.
That means he has to scramble at home to catch
up on grading or plan future lessons.
When he fills in for a class with no permanent
teacher, he feels like it's an uphill battle to do his
job well.
" In a year after the pandemic when kids are trying
to get to a place where they're re-acclimating
themselves with structure and education and
Jeff Morehead/The Chronicle-Tribune via AP

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Education Week - July 13, 2022

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