BALTIMORE — Educators from across the country met on Thursday to discuss the nationwide teacher shortage during a Johns Hopkins University briefing.
“Today as school districts and statewide systems across the nation are preparing for fall, many are facing severe staffing shortages,” said Christopher Morphew, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
Morphew led the discussion on the teacher shortage.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 280,000 fewer public school teachers nationally than before the pandemic. The Maryland State Board of Education said that 5,516 teachers left in 2022.
The panelists discussed why the shortage is happening and how to get more teachers back into the classroom.
Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises was among the panelists who spoke about some of the causes of the shortage.
“It is just that virtual learning, the pandemic, more racial unrest just exacerbated what we knew,” she said.
Santelises said that the challenges presented over the past two years made teaching even more difficult on top of long-existing problems like teachers saying they do not have enough time for work-life balance and too much paperwork.
A National Education Association poll found that a majority of the nation’s teachers are leaving because of issues like stagnant salaries, stressful work conditions and an increasingly politicized profession.
BCPS has tried to address some of those concerns recently.
“We had to make a quick pivot and include some wellness days,” Santelises said. “We made sure that this year, we have built-in more days for teachers to work on paperwork.”
She also said providing more resources to families so students can learn outside of class could help.
“Some of our investments in more technology have meant that more families have access to those supports that match where their students needs are, without expecting every single thing that needs to happen, happening during the school day,” Santelises said.
Baltimore City Public Schools told WJZ that the school system started hiring earlier than ever before and filled about 500 slots by July 4.
But the district also had to fill newly created positions.
“We added about 600 more new teaching and school-based positions through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future (Kirwan Funds) and that increased the number of vacancies at the beginning of the year to about 1,300,” Sherry Christian, Media & Public Relations Manager for BCPS, wrote in an e-mail to WJZ. “This is a historically high number due to the Kirwan funds that allow principals to create vacancies for key positions. Without the added positions, City Schools would already have most of those 600 slots filled.”
Christian said that her district offers competitive salaries and benefits, has broadened their recruitment efforts beyond the immediate local area, is reaching out to substitute teachers and retirees and has smoothed their hiring pipeline to get candidates hired quickly.
Earlier this week, BCPS published a release that said some schools are reducing non-core teaching positions so those staff members can help provide classroom coverage and added that staff with teaching certifications working in non-school positions may be temporarily reassigned to schools.