With school starting in a matter of weeks for a lot of students, districts across the country are grappling with a teacher shortage. Over the past two years, more than half of a million teachers have quit their jobs, and as time runs out before the start of the school year, there's now a rush to fill positions.
The urgency to fill teaching positions across the state is so dire, that the Sayreville School District emailed a flyer to the community virtually begging for paraprofessionals to step forward with less than a month before classes begin again. Two dozen teaching positions at the town's high school and middle school are open, just a little more than three weeks before teachers are to report for duty.
While Sayreville Superintendent Dr. Richard Labbe said that he does "eventually see an end to this" and that the teacher supply will recover, it won't be happening this year.
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A new state pilot program to get non-teachers into the classroom is offering some hope to the more than 100 districts that signed up, including Sayreville, with a full week's worth of workshops aimed at helping those newcomers learn quickly. But Sayreville has yet to see great success out of the program yet.
"Although we’re optimistic that this pilot program will yield more teachers for us, we’ve only hired one teacher that fit that category," said Dr. Labbe. It was an English teacher, who will work at the high school.
Another pilot to hire retired teachers has come up with, well, nothing.
Some science classrooms could see as many as 30 students, instead of the preferred 24. There have been intense recruitment efforts lately from the superintendent and school leaders to try and get more teachers on board.
"I would go to the colleges as our director of human resources does and honestly, social media plays a big part too," said Carolynn O'Connor, the science supervisor for the district. "In the science classroom, it's actually dangerous (to have more students) because you are dealing with hands on, you are dealing with the equipment, you're dealing with the students up and about."
In fact, the college visits were this past spring, with only some modest success. The number of graduates is down nationwide, and many are declining to pursue a teaching career.
Special education in Sayreville is especially desperate, with eight positions to fill. Supervisor Dr. Cynthia DeFina won’t be surprised to find herself back in the classroom.
"I was helping with teaching multiple classrooms a during the pandemic time, so I might have to do something like that again," she said. "It puts more pressure on the existing teachers we have, because they're seeing more students, there's more of a workload."
While getting one new instructor from a professional non-education field may not seem like a victory, each one will get intense training before and during the school year.
"Learn as you go, and just to jump back now with what we provide in the building, we place every new educator that doesn’t have a background with a mentor for the entire first school year," said Christopher Howard, the supervisor of social studies and professional development.
One state legislator calls the shortage a crisis. The NJEA, the state teachers union, says it is working on both short-term and long-term solutions.
