Indiana school districts are dealing with teacher shortages.
According to a new survey, even more districts are feeling the impact now than in 2016.
So, what’s going on? More than 130 of the 141 district superintendents in the survey said they have a teacher shortage now.
Mundy
“The teacher shortage is real,” said Dave Mundy, associate superintendent for Noblesville Schools. “What started a few years ago as a shortage of teachers in specialty disciplines is now a shortage of teachers in many disciplines, as well as a significant shortage of support staff. We’re thankful that as a well-respected district we’re able to attract strong talent, but we also struggle to fill positions and currently have support staff vacancies.”
Arrowood
Hamilton Heights Superintendent Derek Arrowood stated, “Our challenges have been finding quality applicants in the area of Science and Special Education. To combat this challenge we have two outstanding educators that are pursuing licensure in the area of special education and science while teaching under emergency permits. We were very fortunate to find these teachers and they are doing great things for our students. Our retention rates for teachers have been very strong, specifically after the third year of teaching in HHSC. Our best teacher recruiting tool has been our ability to demonstrate the quality of the HHSC Community and students as well as recent enhancements of our facilities creating and reinventing our teaching spaces into state of the art learning environments.”
Indiana’s governor and the state superintendent of public education both said Thursday morning they’ve got plans to fix it.
Jennifer McCormick, the Indiana superintendent, said, “It is a concern. I don’t think there’s anyone across the state who isn’t concerned.”
Some 94 percent of Indiana district superintendents recently surveyed said they have a teacher shortage.
McCormick said, “We’re dealing with those struggles in teacher shortage. Not just sometimes in quantity, but quality. I would say that goes into administration as well. We’re all dealing with that.”
This is the third year Indiana State University professor Terry McDaniel has done this survey. In it, nearly 70 percent of superintendents said they’ve got a shortage in special education teachers. Fifty-seven percent said their shortages are in math and science. McDaniel said many teachers are leaving the industry and few are coming in.
McCormick said her office is already working with other state officials on the problem.
“For the first time, we’ve hired a talent officer to really dive into retention and attraction issues,” McCormick said. “How do we get good people in the classrooms? How do we get those students who are interested in teaching?”
The survey found 23 percent of districts lean on full-time substitutes to cope.
Superintendents in the survey said poor pay is one of their biggest hurdles when it comes to attracting qualified candidates. Gov. Eric Holcomb said it’s a problem that has a statewide impact.
“We also have shortages in five key sectors out there,” the Republican governor said. “When you have about 100,000 unfilled jobs across the state of Indiana, we have to do everything we can to make sure we get our kiddos off on that right first step.”