Teacher Shortage Is Adding to the Problems Schools Are Having During the Pandemic

caused a teacher shortage. Early retirements and quarantines are forcing some school administrators to recruit parents as substitute teachers, increase class sizes, and even use bus drivers to babysit classrooms. Arizona in particular has been hit hard by a shortage of teachers, and many say that educational achievement has suffered because of it. Valerie Boreline, national reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Valorie,

glad to be here. We've been checking in periodically, obviously with our teachers as the pandemic continues to go on. We know how big of a disruptor the pandemic has already been to the school system. Students learning in class, students learning at home remotely. It's been quite a mass stopping classes because of rising cases. It's all over the place.

But we're also seeing that there's a big teacher shortage out there, and school districts are having to get really creative, I guess you would say, in how to fill some of those seats, recruiting parents, bus drivers, the babysit classrooms. There's really this all hands on deck type of mode for a lot of school systems out there right now. So, Valerie, you wrote a pretty comprehensive article about what's going on.

Tell us what we're seeing with this teacher shortage. You really can't overstate the disruption that's happening in Khel and all education in this country, particularly in the public schools. You know, it was one thing in the spring to have the brush of adrenaline, and we're gonna make virtual learning work and get through the spring. And now if the pandemic drags on into its ninth month, you're seeing parents frustrated, kids not learning as much as they should

have by now, and teachers really starting to burnout. And all the disruption that you're talking about is adding up to a real um difficult working environment for teachers, and you're seeing people leave the profession. You're also seeing commonly in many school districts that they're not enough teachers in the building to whole class, whether because they're quarantining or what have you. So it really the staffing crunch in

American schools is something you can't underestimate. Back to the teachers, you know, the staffing crunch. Really the teachers that stay behind, then those are the ones that get really fatigued by the whole thing. They're the ones that get the burnout of the whole thing. And a lot of the teachers

and administrators I spoke with say exactly that, like, it's tough. Now, it's tough for teachers to have to sub out for another teacher during their planning time, for example, But what's really tough is the burnout factor and whether that teachers will stay in the field or potentially retire early. And also one thing to think about is whether what's happening in the school system entices young people to go into teaching.

They see what's happening firsthand, and will they decide to go that route seeing how tough it is for their own teachers that they admire and in some cases really see being overwhelmed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Public school employment in November was down eight point from February. This is the lowest level since two thousand and you guys have a nice little graph of showing the progression of employment, and you just see that sharp drop earlier

this year and throughout the pandemic. Arizona has shown a real stark contrast in all of this, heavily impacted by this. I thought that the statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was really eye opening. If you think about it, schools have on this fewer people in the building, but the building is the same size, their responsibilities are the same, if not more, And because of physical social distance, teachers can have you with kids in the classroom, so in

some ways they're stretched dinner. So what really struck me visiting some schools was how being having fewer people in the building taxes the others that are there. And to your point about Arizona, yes, I think this is happening in pockets all across the country. In Arizona certainly is one educators I've talked to, including this head of superintendent,

just said, yeah, it's a crisis for us. Let's get a little deeper in their Arizona, they weren't able to hire traditionally certified teachers for seventy eight percent of some open positions that they had, so they had to get creative. A lot of them were filled by emergency substitutes. You know, obviously you get people from other counties. Student teachers were

a big source of plugging that hole there. And then beyond that, they're urging parents people with you know, they reduced some of the requirements, so they're people with high school diplomas can take an online course and then be certified for emergency substitutes. So they're getting very creative with how to feel a lot of these positions, if you think about it, they're required to have, you know, not just legally, but you know, morally. They're educators and want

to educate. They need to have teacher in the rooms virtually or physically, so, but they're having to get really creative to make that happen. So the relaxing around standards is a theme you hear all over the country. Iowa and Missouri, for example, lowered the requirements to be an emergency substitute. In Atlanta, you could be twenty years old. And we talked to some kids that were twenty years old and not teachers, but physically in the in the classroom.

So I think it's one of those things Arizona has had is an example of a state that's had a teacher shortage building for a number of years. You know, as you might remember the Red Fred Protest of two thousand and eighteen really started in Phoenix and kind of blossomed out in other places around the country. So the teacher shortage, comparatively low teacher pay there, the really high

ratio of students to teachers. There's like twenty three and a half students per teacher in Arizona compared to sixteen kids for teacher nationally. So there's just a lot of pressure points they're building up. And then the combination of that, that wave of teacher shortage building crashing up against the wave of the pandemic. It's really created a tough situation in many many Arizona school You have a lot of

examples in the article. They're all very good, but I wanted to focus a little bit, if you can, on Principal Christine Hollandsworth. This is in Phoenix and they're having severe staff shortages there. She was up until you know, early in the morning, trying to find a substitute teacher. In many cases, she's begin to help teach classes. Other teachers are combining classes. Tell us a little bit about

how they're approaching this. One of the things that was really amazing being around Principal Holly's Worth was just how she was one of the ones who kept saying, it's all hands on deck. We're figuring it out as we go because we have to. But I should know that just how cheerful, how positive she was, and how much she loved seeing even the small cohort of students that

was able to be in the building. She was so happy to see them and put through their masks and say, hey, I can see I could see her smile under there, So you know, I would say that teachers are really in administrators are trying to make the best of of a really tough situation. But the day that I spent some time with her, she was having a hard time

finding a substitute. There's nationwide pressure on substitute teachers and they're just not enough of them, and she couldn't find a substitute for her our teacher, even though she'd been trying. She was up at four that morning trying to find someone figure out how she was going to handle it. And I was like, well, gods, you were up at four and it's it's eight schools starting and she's like, I'm up at four every day this year. And I think that's part of the reality is that that we

were talking about earlier. It's just as this stretches on kind of where we had it. The new normal for schools is constant change every day. It has been for nine months. Yeah, I mean it's tough. Miss Hollingsworth went on to this elementary school database to see if she can fill a bunch of these open seats, and I guess they only got five applicants for dozens of teaching jobs.

This is across thirty two different elementary school so, I mean, that's just really kind of illustrates how short this thing is. And we're talking about other creative options. Enough, sometimes a teacher will come on and say, man, this is just not for me anymore, and then they quit within the first couple of weeks or so. And that was kind of another recurring theme that a lot of people were experiencing. So it's just a tough time overall, and obviously we

need more funding for these programs for the teachers. It's just tough all around, really well academic, it's a difficult situation for online learning and hybrid learning all around. Like you said, I will point out that the pressure in schools is more intense in some places than others. Right So in rural areas, for example, it's really hard right

now to get teachers to build jobs. But in cit these where there's good quality of living and you know, maybe you know, support for teachers in schools, you might have far more applicants for jobs. So it's uneven, but I think there's definitely pressure on the teacher's supply in many, many places nationwide. Valerie Borderline, national reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Oh sure, thanks so much for having me. I'm oscar A Mirrors

and this has been opening America. Don't forget the effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every money through Friday, So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast