Alleged teacher shortage

[Anonymous]

The department of education publishes a report on teacher shortages every year. https://tsa.ed.gov/#/home/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just go to the Employment section of the FCPS website. You will see the pages and pages of jobs. They are in all areas and at all grade levels.

I paid attention for the first time this school year and noticed that there were pages of jobs available all year long. Usually positions are filled by Sept 1 or August at the latest. That wasn’t the case this year.

I spoke with someone in leadership about it once during casual conversation and they confirmed that yes the shortage is real.

I don’t see this at a good schools. Our vacancies are always filled immediately, with the exception of sped assistants because who wants to put up with that for $17/hour? They don’t last long when they can make the same in Kindergarten or the library.

You're not at all "good schools".

Just look at the vacancy list. And if you remember, continue to check it throughout the year. There will be vacancies at the "good schools".

A great friend works at what is unarguably considered a good school. The turnover has been insane--for different reasons. Still there are vacancies there every school year throughout the year.

I’m a regular sub, and there are not vacancies throughout the year. As I said, sped assistants are the only thing they struggle with. The school is otherwise fully staffed and vacancies are filled quickly with qualified candidates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just go to the Employment section of the FCPS website. You will see the pages and pages of jobs. They are in all areas and at all grade levels.

I paid attention for the first time this school year and noticed that there were pages of jobs available all year long. Usually positions are filled by Sept 1 or August at the latest. That wasn’t the case this year.

I spoke with someone in leadership about it once during casual conversation and they confirmed that yes the shortage is real.

I don’t see this at a good schools. Our vacancies are always filled immediately, with the exception of sped assistants because who wants to put up with that for $17/hour? They don’t last long when they can make the same in Kindergarten or the library.

You're not at all "good schools".

Just look at the vacancy list. And if you remember, continue to check it throughout the year. There will be vacancies at the "good schools".

A great friend works at what is unarguably considered a good school. The turnover has been insane--for different reasons. Still there are vacancies there every school year throughout the year.

I’m a regular sub, and there are not vacancies throughout the year. As I said, sped assistants are the only thing they struggle with. The school is otherwise fully staffed and vacancies are filled quickly with qualified candidates.

You're speaking about your specific school. I'm talking about another one. I also advise posters not to take my word for it. They can check out the job vacancy list themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just go to the Employment section of the FCPS website. You will see the pages and pages of jobs. They are in all areas and at all grade levels.

I paid attention for the first time this school year and noticed that there were pages of jobs available all year long. Usually positions are filled by Sept 1 or August at the latest. That wasn’t the case this year.

I spoke with someone in leadership about it once during casual conversation and they confirmed that yes the shortage is real.

I don’t see this at a good schools. Our vacancies are always filled immediately, with the exception of sped assistants because who wants to put up with that for $17/hour? They don’t last long when they can make the same in Kindergarten or the library.

You're not at all "good schools".

Just look at the vacancy list. And if you remember, continue to check it throughout the year. There will be vacancies at the "good schools".

A great friend works at what is unarguably considered a good school. The turnover has been insane--for different reasons. Still there are vacancies there every school year throughout the year.

I’m a regular sub, and there are not vacancies throughout the year. As I said, sped assistants are the only thing they struggle with. The school is otherwise fully staffed and vacancies are filled quickly with qualified candidates.

You're speaking about your specific school. I'm talking about another one. I also advise posters not to take my word for it. They can check out the job vacancy list themselves.

There are four regions in FCPS. What you see at one school isn’t indicative of another. Our school doesn’t have a lot of turnover during the year, but we have trouble filing vacancies. We are a “good” school, and in a desirable pyramid. It doesn’t matter.

This is especially true if you are trying to fill math or science positions. You have to have a specific cert for specific maths/science, and frankly, those people have very little trouble getting jobs in the private sector and will make a lot more than they would teaching.

[Anonymous]

As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

Maybe poor school administration has something to do with it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

Maybe poor school administration has something to do with it

I’m not sure whether you’re referring to school-based or district leadership, but I find it hard to believe that principals are responsibility for which major kids are choosing in college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

Maybe poor school administration has something to do with it

I’m not sure whether you’re referring to school-based or district leadership, but I find it hard to believe that principals are responsibility for which major kids are choosing in college

Its probably just the low salaries and the high cost of living. I would not encourage my child to become a teacher.

[Anonymous]

FCPS recruits heavily in states like Pennsylvania. The cost of living here is astronomical compared to PA. I actually really feel badly for the teachers that come here and have to have a side job or two or three just to make their rent. And, FCPS is a huge district and that can be hard to adapt to if you are coming from a township or town based school system like in PA and NJ. I think there are a lot of factors but I don't know that the out of state teachers are truly prepared for what teaching is like here. Yes, the salaries are higher but everything else is too.

[Anonymous]

Maybe they should move some of these resource and admin positions back to the classroom and focus on teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they should move some of these resource and admin positions back to the classroom and focus on teaching.

They are worse than new hires!

They typically have been out of the classroom for years and have forgotten what it is like. At least new hires recently student taught.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

Maybe poor school administration has something to do with it

I’m not sure whether you’re referring to school-based or district leadership, but I find it hard to believe that principals are responsibility for which major kids are choosing in college

Its probably just the low salaries and the high cost of living. I would not encourage my child to become a teacher.

Not to mention the MASSIVE amount of bureaucracy, crap from parents, and inability to discipline horrible classroom behavior that teachers have to deal with. Who in the world would want to deal with that during their entire carrier, barraged from all sides. Yet parents howl over and over about how they can't get "decent" teachers for their kids. You do it to yourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the principal hires a long-term sub, they are in essence filling the position. I dont understand the rationale here -- so they are willing to hire someone they see as crappy or unqualified for a year? Sucks to be those kids.

Also there is still someone willing to do the work if they took the LT sub job?

Our ES is highly rated and a few years ago my kid's would-be teacher got sick over the summer. They hired a retired teacher to take over temporarily at the beginning of the year until they could find a replacement, but couldn't. The retired teacher wanted to go back to being retired, so they hired another LT sub, who was completely incompetent as far as teaching anything and an absolute nightmare in terms of handling the kids. She got fired after a couple of weeks. After that, they finally found a SAHM to LT sub the rest of the year. Not a retired teacher, but seems to have done a decent job.

I've subbed and subbing is a horrible job even in normal times because of the kids' behavior. LT subbing may be better because the kids know you control their grades and can call up their parents, but you basically have the workload of a teacher in terms of lesson prep, grading, meetings, communication with parents, remediation, etc. at a fraction of the pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a school administrator in FCPS, I’ll agree with many who say that it’s not necessarily difficult to staff the schools (unless maybe you’re a poorly run Title I with a teacher exodus), but I will say that the QUALITY of candidate is declining. Whereas 5 years ago we were still pulling from B+ and A- candidates in July and August, waiting to hire now until that time is getting you Cs and Ds. I’d encourage folks to re-center part of this discussion on teacher quality rather than quantity. My worry is that some of the best and brightest that once saw K12 as a calling to a fulfilling career and good retirement and no longer doing so... this unfortunately leads to negative outcomes for our students.

Your post is on par with my experience and I've posted about it. We have at least 5 long-term subs at my school and they have been in place since September. There are applicants for those positions but my principal has not hired any of the applicants. It is better to go with a good long-term sub than it is to hire a bad teacher. Unfortunately teaching is seen as a profession of last resort for most people. The only ones who do it seem to be either very committed or very desperate.

[Anonymous]

Why would a "good long term sub" want the job though instead if being hired as an actual staff member? Isn't that insulting to them and wouldn't it mean less pay for same work?