Anyone who has been following this week’s news and media is well aware of a theme that permeated the press. No, I am not referring to any stories involving former President Trump or even the devastating fires in Maui. I refer to America’s teacher shortage. If you are a frequent news checker hopefully you realized that there is a serious teacher shortage across our country. In an NBC news article entitled “From Crisis to Catastrophe,” Shannon Pettypiece writes, “Administrators say that to deal with the staffing shortfalls, they are relying again this year on long-term substitute teachers, hiring emergency certified teachers with no teaching qualifications or experience, bringing in teachers from overseas and increasing class sizes.” After a quick Google search of “teacher shortage,” articles popped up showing how this issue is choking schools in Florida, California, Rhode Island and, of course, New York State.

Now you might assume this is not an issue in our community or in your own child’s school, but guess again. Just look at how many schools are still looking to fill key positions. I recently ran into an administrator from one of the more popular high schools in our area, and he told me that he finally was just able to fill a key spot in his faculty for the upcoming year. “Is it a good choice? No, but I had no choice,” he said. I was shocked that in his school, he also was dealing with this issue.

While the shortage is not unique to our community I would like to offer two possible ways we can alleviate this issue.

1)Teacher compensation has always been a deterrent for potential talent to join or stay in education. Putting aside the initial salary, we need to find a way to provide our teachers with better benefits. What pension plan does your child’s school have for their faculty? Is the school placing the ever increasing medical insurance burden on the teacher’s or are they coming up with creative ways for the teachers to not feel the burden?

2) We need to create more middle level positions. After teaching for a few years, teachers often try to jump to administrative positions because they need the salary increase. Many of these teachers are simply not ready or cut out for those positions—but they need a salary increase at that point in their careers. Schools need to create more salaries in the range of 125-150k so that teachers can stay in their teaching position while taking on some additional responsibilities. Otherwise how can we expect them to last in this field for more than a few years?

Nothing is a quick fix, but it is worth exploring how to make these possibilities a reality.

If you care about your children’s education I urge you to push your school boards and lay leadership on this one. It is going to come back to haunt us, if we don’t fix this system. Yes, even your own children.

Name Withheld Upon Request