Teachers from certain other states could start working in South Carolina classrooms more quickly under a House committee advanced Thursday.

The bill, which passed out of the Education and Public Works Committee 14-4, would make South Carolina the to join a compact agreeing not to make teachers reapply for the certification they need before starting instruction.

“We’re doing our best to fill vacancies in our classrooms with safe, sound, well-educated people, not very, very kind but untrained substitutes who are filling our classrooms,” said Rep. Shannon Erickson, a Beaufort Republican who leads the committee and sponsored the bill.

Under existing law, anyone licensed to teach in another state must when they move. Approval from the state education department depends on how well their home state’s requirements align with those in South Carolina.

Automatically accepting out-of-state licenses could speed up the process and make things easier for teachers coming into the state, teachers’ advocates and supporting legislators said.

Educators who went through the process of getting a teaching license in another state shouldn’t have to start over just because they’ve moved, said Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“They’ve done the work already,” Crews said. “That needs to count for something.”

The compact initially started in 2023 with the goal of helping military families, who often need to move with little notice.

For teachers married to military members, moving to a state with an agreement that accepts their licensure could reduce some of the stresses of relocating, said Patrick Kelly, a teachers’ advocate with Palmetto State Teachers Association. He gave Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, home of House Speaker Murrell Smith, as an example.

Moving is already a difficult process, and attempting to get the paperwork together to apply for certification can make it even harder, Kelly said.

“Anything we can do to diminish the burden on those families that are already serving our nation through uniform service, I think that’s just commonsense policy,” Kelly said.

The agreement would go beyond military families. Anyone moving into the state would be able to start teaching as soon as they found a job, potentially creating another avenue to fill the the state still had at the beginning of this school year.

That was a dramatic drop from the record-high number of vacancies schools reported after the COVID-19 pandemic, but anything the state can do to get more teachers is a good thing, Kelly said.

Plus, the state could then harness its recent influx of residents, said Ryan Dellinger, director of education policy for conservative think tank Palmetto Promise Institute. Many of those moving are retirees , but others might be certified teachers looking for a new job, he said.

And even more might decide to move into the state with the agreement in place, Dellinger said.

Neighboring states North Carolina and Georgia have not yet joined the compact, so a teacher looking to move to the Southeast without a specific location in mind might choose South Carolina because they know they’ll have an easier time transferring their certification, Dellinger said.

Under the agreement, “South Carolina is suddenly a very competitive place to live,” Dellinger said.

If North Carolina and Georgia did decide to sign agreements of their own, that could also help the state’s recruitment efforts, Kelly said. Teachers just over the South Carolina border might decide to start teaching in the state if they didn’t have to get another certification, he said.

“I’d love to make it even easier for their certified educators to come to South Carolina and work with our students,” Kelly said.

That could cut both ways.

Other states would recognize South Carolina’s certification in turn, potentially drawing some teachers away. But with the state’s growth and recent improvements in teacher salaries and working conditions, that’s not likely to make a major difference, Kelly said.

Last year, the Legislature passed the which, among other things, made renewals of teacher certificates easier, guaranteed planning time, and required districts to tell teachers their expected salaries before they sign contracts.

As for pay, the state’s minimum salary for first-year teachers has risen from $30,113 in 2017 to $48,500 this school year.

Following the governor’s recommendation, the House’s first draft of the state budget would increase state-paid minimums by $2,000 across the , which pays teachers by years of experience and college degree. That means no first-year teacher could make less than $50,500 next school year. Many districts pay above the minimums.

“This is a place where educators want to come work,” Kelly said. “Let’s make it to where they can come and do it.”

How much time and trouble the proposal would save teachers moving from a state within the compact would vary.

Under the existing process, the timeline depends on how quickly teachers can get together the information needed for the application. Kelly likened it to the process of getting a passport.

“How quickly you can do that is dependent on how quickly you can put your hands on the paperwork that you need,” he said.

Teachers with less than three years of experience must pass tests to gain additional certificates required. And all newly arriving teachers, regardless of their experience, must complete an evaluation of their skills before they can receive a long-term state certificate that renews with professional development, according to the Department of Education.

The proposal would erase those steps for teachers coming from a state within the compact.

‘Simply an option’

Most of the pushback on the bill Thursday came from several of the House’s most conservative members, who worried about the state giving too much of its authority to other states, especially those with Democratic majorities.

Teachers in Washington, for instance, are required to undergo training on diversity, equity and inclusion to earn their teaching certifications, which could influence their teaching, said Rep. Stephen Frank, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. Or, the commission overseeing the compact might try to pressure South Carolina into accepting similar requirements, he said.

“While on day one I don’t see that posing a great threat to us, in this compact, it sets up this commission, which will then promulgate rules, and we have no idea what those rules may be or may become,” the Greenville Republican said.

While the bill makes it easier for out-of-state teachers to hunt for jobs, schools don’t have to hire them, Erickson said. And South Carolina keeps control of its licensing process, meaning the commission would have no control over how it certifies teachers, she said.

“It simply allows an open door in one piece — literally one piece — of their qualification to not have to wait,” Erickson said. “It’s not saying that they have to be hired. It’s simply an option.”

South Carolina has agreements to recognize out-of-state licenses for other professions, including nursing, physical therapy, mental health therapy, social work and corrections officers, Erickson said. Boating licenses also apply between states.

Teachers should get the same treatment, Erickson said.

“I think these partnerships are really important,” Erickson said. “They’re a good way of making sure that if you do have someone who’s saying, ‘Oh, well, I might want to move in this area of the country right now, we’re going to stand out.’”

“That’s really never a bad thing,” she added.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

As another school year ends, superintendents across the United States are staring down an autumn staffing crisis, with 1 in 8 teaching positions either vacant or filled by an underqualified educator.

States that are struggling with post-pandemic teacher shortages have spent millions to lure replacements and retain veterans with hiring bonuses and bumps in salaries. But hiring gaps remain, so some states also are trying another tactic: changing their standards.

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The changes in teacher training and licensing come amid widespread turmoil in public schools: Tax revenue is being siphoned toward private school vouchers in many states; some classrooms are being scrutinized for banned books, displays or teaching lessons that trip into diversity, equity and inclusion territory; and students who went through pandemic-era shutdowns are struggling both with sitting still and with learning the material.

Some surveys show that fewer than a fifth of teachers are happy in their jobs.

“Teaching is not seen as an attractive profession right now,” said Drew Gitomer, an expert on teaching assessment at Rutgers Graduate School of Education.

“COVID exacerbated things, and teachers are caught in the middle of political battles — over curriculum, book bans, even personal attacks,” he said. “It’s not a healthy work environment, and that drives people away.”

Last year, Illinois allowing teacher candidates to begin student teaching before passing content-area exams. It was an effort to reduce barriers for underrepresented groups, the measure’s sponsor said.

A bill under consideration this year over whether to factor pupils’ test scores into teacher evaluations, a break from a 15-year-old mandate.

In New Jersey, a formally removes the Praxis Core exam — traditionally used as an entry-level screening tool for aspiring teachers — from certification requirements.

And in Nevada — one of the states hit hardest by teacher shortages — a bill would for incoming educators. The bill would allow teachers credentialed in other states to begin working in Nevada classrooms while awaiting formal approval.

It also would remove extra steps for teachers switching grade levels and would waive application fees for recent substitute teachers.

Linda Darling-Hammond, founding president and chief knowledge officer of the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said teacher shortages hit hardest in schools serving low-income students and students of color, where instability often leads to larger class sizes, canceled courses or a revolving door of substitute teachers.

“When you walk into a school facing shortages, you see instability,” she said. “Students may be taught by people who don’t know what to do, who leave quickly, and who often rely more on discipline than engagement.”

The root cause? Teacher attrition.

“Nine out of 10 vacancies every year are because of attrition — and two-thirds of that is not retirement,” Darling-Hammond said. “Support in the beginning matters. Teachers who come in and get a mentor stay longer. If you’re just thrown in to sink or swim, the odds of leaving are much greater.”

States have long struggled to attract teachers, and credentialing changes aren’t unusual. But some education advocates fear long-term repercussions.

Melissa Tooley, director of K-12 educator quality at the left-leaning think tank New America, said most states now offer alternative and fast-track teacher certification pathways, many of which allow candidates to start teaching with little or no pedagogical training in how to teach.

“We’re churning through people who might have potential, but we’re not setting them up for success,” she said. “A lot of what states are doing is short term. It’s about filling seats, not necessarily building a sustainable or high-quality workforce.”

More than 40 states require aspiring teachers to take the costly Praxis Subject test for the subject they want to teach, which some experts argue excludes strong candidates and duplicates other assessments.

“You were excluding people who might be good teachers but didn’t do well on that specific test,” said Rutgers’ Gitomer, who has researched the test’s effects on recruitment.

However, he added, dropping tests doesn’t necessarily help.

Several states — , , , and — have dropped a licensure requirement known as edTPA since 2022, but there’s little evidence the move has helped ease teacher shortages, Gitomer said. (The acronym stands for Educative Teacher Performance Assessment and involves a portfolio that includes testing and videos of classroom performance.)

“The state eliminated edTPA but didn’t replace it with a specific alternative,” he said.

“Instead, it gave full discretion back to individual institutions to develop or adopt their own performance assessments,” he said. “When we talked to institutions, it became pretty clear they didn’t think removing edTPA would be a major driver in addressing the shortage — and they haven’t seen evidence that it has been.”

How best to credential

Tooley said state credentialing systems must navigate a delicate balance: ensuring there are enough teachers, maintaining instructional quality and increasing workforce diversity.

“There’s this triangle — three pieces that need to be in place — and I think there are real tensions when it comes to how states are designing their certification policies,” she said.

And Gitomer described a fragmented national landscape, where some states are tightening teacher entry standards while others are dramatically loosening them — even allowing non-degreed individuals to teach.

“Some states are trying to raise standards; others are relaxing them to the point where you may not even need a college degree,” he said.

Indiana now all pre-K through grade 6 and special education teachers to complete 80 hours of training on the “science of reading,” a method that includes phonics, and pass an exam by 2027. State Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican, has cutting the requirement in half, calling it “an excessive burden with little actual benefit” in a news release.

In Texas, a bill aims by the 2029-30 school year. The legislation would set a gradual cap on the percentage of uncertified teachers districts can employ in core curriculum classes — starting at 20% in 2026-27 and decreasing to 5% in 2029-30.

According to the Texas Education Agency,lacked a state teaching certificate or permit.

Yet some states stand out for how they’re changing their requirements, Tooley said.

She pointed to Washington, which has designed a encouraging paraprofessionals, often known as teacher’s aides, to become classroom teachers. Also known as paraeducators, they’re a group with classroom experience, community ties and higher retention likelihood.

There, school districts are required to offer foundational training — ranging from 14 to 28 hours — directly to paraeducators.

In West Virginia, a new law now allows districts to count full-time working in one or two classrooms toward meeting the required number of aides or paraprofessionals in K-3 classrooms.

Tooley noted that and are experimenting with “menu-style” licensing flexibility — allowing candidates to demonstrate qualification through various combinations of GPA and test scores, rather than rigid cutoffs.

“These are people already in schools, often from the same cultural or linguistic backgrounds as students,” Tooley said. “They’re more likely to succeed and to stay.”

Low pay

A 2024 by the EdWeek Research Center found that public school teachers are increasingly reporting declines in mental health, job satisfaction and classroom stability. Seventy percent of teachers recommended student mental health interventions, and nearly half said schools lack enough counselors, psychologists and social workers.

As mental well-being has worsened, the share of public school teachers who are very satisfied with their jobs has also declined by 2 percentage points from the previous year, to 18%, according to the , which was conducted by the EdWeek Research Center on behalf of Merrimack College.

While teacher wellness supports remain limited, educators say improvements in pay and student discipline are the most needed changes.

To entice passionate but burned out educators from leaving the workforce, several states have raised minimum teacher pay. Arkansas , and South Carolina this year, giving it a boost to $48,500 next school year. South Dakota enacted a $45,000 minimum with yearly increases, and penalties . Connecticut advanced a bill setting a $63,450 salary floor, while and others are eyeing further increases.

At the federal level, the  seeks to establish a national $60,000 minimum salary for teachers at a qualifying school to boost recruitment and retention across the country. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat, remains in committee.

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Lawmakers want to turn the tide on the growing number of unprepared and uncertified teachers by restricting who can lead Texas classrooms. But school leaders worry those limits will leave them with fewer options to refill their teacher ranks.

Tucked inside the Texas House’s $7.6 billion school finance package is a provision that would ban uncertified teachers from instructing core classes in public schools. gives districts until fall 2026 to certify their K-5 math and reading teachers and until fall 2027 to certify teachers in other academic classes.

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Texas would help uncertified teachers pay for the cost of getting credentialed. Under HB 2, those who participate in an in-school training and mentoring program would receive a one-time $10,000 payment and those who go through a traditional university or alternative certification program would get $3,000. Special education and emergent bilingual teachers would get their certification fees waived. Educator training experts say it could be the biggest financial investment Texas made in teacher preparation. Rep. , the Salado Republican who authored the bill, has signaled the House Public Education Committee will vote on HB 2 on Tuesday.

District leaders, once reluctant to hire uncertified teachers, now rely on them often to respond to the state’s growing teacher shortage. And while they agree with the spirit of the legislation, some worry the bill would ask too much too soon of districts and doesn’t offer a meaningful solution to replace uncertified teachers who leave the profession.

“What’s going to happen when we’re no longer able to hire uncertified teachers? Class sizes have to go up, programs have to disappear…. We won’t have a choice,” said David Vroonland, the former superintendent of the Mesquite school district near Dallas and the Frenship school district near Lubbock. “There will be negative consequences if we don’t put in place serious recruitment efforts.”

A floodgate of uncertified teachers

Nowadays, superintendents often go to job fairs to recruit teachers and come out empty-handed. There are not as many Texans who want to be teachers as there used to be.

The salary in Texas is about , so people choose better-paying careers. Teachers say they are , sometimes navigating unwieldy class sizes and using weekends to catch up on grading.

Heath Morrison started to see the pool of teacher applicants shrink years ago when he was at the helm of Montgomery ISD. Many teachers left the job during the COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated the problem.

“This teacher shortage is getting more and more pronounced,” said Morrison, who is now the CEO of Teachers of Tomorrow, a popular alternative teacher certification program. “The reality of most school districts across the country is you’re not making a whole lot more money 10 years into your job than you were when you first entered … And so that becomes a deterrent.”

As the pool of certified teachers shrunk, districts found a stopgap solution: bringing on uncertified teachers. Uncertified teachers accounted for roughly 38% of newly hired instructors last year, with many concentrated in rural districts.

The Texas Legislature facilitated the flood of uncertified teachers. A 2015 law lets public schools get exemptions from requirements like teacher certification, school start dates and class sizes — the same exemptions allowed for open enrollment charter schools.

Usually, to teach in Texas classrooms, candidates must obtain a certification by earning a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, completing an educator preparation program and passing teacher certification exams.

Teacher preparation experts say certifications give teachers the tools to lead a high quality classroom. To pass certification tests, teaching candidates learn how to plan for lessons and manage discipline in a classroom.

But the 2015 law allowed districts to hire uncertified teachers by presenting a so-called “district of innovation plan” to show they were struggling to meet credential requirements because of a teacher shortage. By 2018, had gotten teacher certification exemptions.

“Now, what we’ve seen is everyone can demonstrate a shortage,” said Jacob Kirksey, a researcher at Texas Tech University. “Almost every district in Texas is a district of innovation. That is what has allowed for the influx of uncertified teachers. Everybody is getting that waiver for certification requirements.”

This session, House lawmakers are steadfast on undoing the loophole they created after new research from Kirksey sounded the alarm on the impacts of unprepared teachers on student learning. Students with new uncertified teachers , his analysis found. They missed class more than students with certified teachers, a signal of disengagement.

Uncertified teachers are also less likely to stick with the job long-term, disrupting school stability.

“The state should act urgently on how to address the number of uncertified teachers in classrooms,” said Kate Greer, a policy director at Commit Partnership. The bill “rights a wrong that we’ve had in the state for a long time.”

The price of getting certified

Rep. , a Plano Republican who sits on the House Public Education Committee, said his wife has worked as an uncertified art teacher at Allen ISD. She started a program to get certified this winter and had to pay $5,000 out of pocket.

That cost may be “not only a hurdle but an impediment for someone who wants to teach and is called and equipped to teach,” Leach said earlier this month during a committee hearing on HB 2.

House lawmakers are proposing to lower the financial barriers that keep Texans who want to become teachers from getting certified.

“Quality preparation takes longer, is harder and it’s more expensive. In the past, we’ve given [uncertified candidates] an opportunity just to walk into the classroom,” said Jean Streepey, the chair of the State Board for Educator Certification. “How do we help teachers at the beginning of their journey to choose something that’s longer, harder and more expensive?”

Streepey sat on the teacher vacancy task force that Gov. established in 2022 to to retention and recruitment challenges at Texas schools. The task force’s recommendations, such as prioritizing raises and improving training, have fingerprints all over the Texas House’s school finance package.

Under HB 2, districts would see money flow in when they put uncertified teachers on the path to certification. And those financial rewards would be higher depending on the quality of the certification program.

Schools with instructors who complete yearlong teacher residencies — which include classroom training and are widely seen as the gold standard for preparing teacher candidates — would receive bigger financial rewards than those with teachers who finish traditional university or alternative certification programs.

Even with the financial help, lawmakers are making a tall order. In two years, the would have to get their credential or be replaced with new, certified teachers.

“The shortages have grown to be so great that I think none of us have a really firm handle on the measures that it’s going to take to turn things around.” said Michael Marder, the executive director of UTeach, a UT-Austin teacher preparatory program. “There is financial support in HB 2 to try to move us back towards the previous situation. However, I just don’t know whether the amounts that are laid out there are sufficient.”

Restrictions like “handcuffs”

Only from 2017 to 2020 went on to get a credential within their first three years of teaching. Texas can expect a jump in uncertified teachers going through teacher preparatory programs because of the financial resources and pressure on schools through HB 2, Marder said.

But for every teacher who does not get credentialed, school leaders will have to go out and find new teachers. And they will have to look from a smaller pool.

The restrictions on uncertified teachers “handcuffs us,”said Gilbert Trevino, the superintendent at Floydada Collegiate ISD, which sits in a rural farming town in West Texas. In recent years, recruiters with his district have gone out to job fairs and hired uncertified teachers with a college degree and field experience in the subjects they want to teach in.

Rural schools across the state have acutely experienced the challenges of the teacher shortage — and have leaned on uncertified teachers more heavily than their urban peers.

“We have to recruit locally and grow our own or hire people who have connections or roots in the community,” Trevino said. “If we hire a teacher straight out of Texas Tech University, we may have them for a year. … And then they may get on at Lubbock ISD or Plainview ISD, where there’s more of a social life.”

Floydada Collegiate ISD recruits local high school students who are working toward their associate’s degree through what is known as a Grown Your Own Teacher program. But Trevino says HB 2 does not give him the time to use this program to replace uncertified teachers. From recruitment to graduation, it takes at least three years before students can lead a classroom on their own, he said.

School leaders fear if they can’t fill all their vacancies, they’ll be pushed to increase class sizes or ask their teachers to prepare lessons for multiple subjects.

“Our smaller districts are already doing that, where teachers have multiple preps,” Trevino said. “Things are already hard on our teachers. So if you add more to their plate, how likely are they to remain in the profession or remain in this district?”

At Wylie ISD in Taylor County, it’s been difficult to find teachers to keep up with student growth. Uncertified teachers in recent years have made up a large number of teacher applicants, according to Cameron Wiley, a school board trustee.

Wiley said restrictions on uncertified teachers is a “good end goal” but would compound the district’s struggles.

“It limits the pot of people that’s already small to a smaller pot. That’s just going to make it more difficult to recruit,” Wiley said. “And if we have a hard time finding people to come in, or we’re not allowed to hire certain people to take some of that pressure off, those class sizes are just going to get bigger.”

Learning suffers when because students are not able to get the attention they need.

“This bill, it’s just another obstacle that we as districts are having to maneuver around and hurl over,” Wiley said. “We’re not addressing the root cause [recruitment]. We’re just putting a Band-Aid on it right now.”

This article originally appeared in at .

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And the pay? It  doesn’t compare, she said.

“We’re underpaid, overworked and we’re not appreciated. We’re seen as, ‘Oh you’re just a day care. No, I’m not a day-care person. I’m a teacher.’ ” 

Muñeton started off as an aide and worked her way up to full-time teacher and president of the , an American Federation of Teachers local union in California.

Muñeton said when she was an assistant teacher, more than half of her paycheck went to health insurance, and her husband was forced to work a second job to help support their two kids, who are both Head Start students. This year, Muñeton said she reached a breaking point and considered leaving her decade-and-a-half -long career in early childhood education to apply for a job at Target.

Muñeton is far from alone: child care workers nationally have one of the lowest-paid occupations, with 11% to 34% living in While the average salary of a public preschool teacher and a kindergarten teacher is about $49,000 and $60,000, respectively, the average annual salary for Head Start and other preschool teachers is about

But this could all change over the next several years according to a recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start and aims to raise annual wages for teachers in the program by about $10,000 and increase access to benefits such as high-quality, affordable health care coverage and paid leave. The rule is largely in response to the struggle to hire and retain qualified staff, which has ultimately led to classrooms closing.

Head Start organizations must comply with some elements of the ruling by October but have until August 2031 to begin providing increased pay. There is an emergency exemption for the 35% of agencies with fewer than 200 funded slots, but they must still make “measurable improvements in wages for staff over time.”

Some agencies may also be eligible for waivers for wage requirements in 2028, if the funding does not increase at a sufficient pace, which could be the rule’s greatest challenge. In order to qualify, they would need to demonstrate that implementing the pay raises would force them to cut occupied seats and show that they’re meeting certain quality requirements.

a nonprofit organization that represents Head Start families, providers and educators, welcomed the federal announcement in an Aug. 16 press release, but expressed disappointment that the edict does not address the need for significant additional funding to fully achieve its goals and could end up forcing operators to slash staff to meet the salary mandates.

“The organization remains concerned that, if Congress and future administrations do not agree to such increases, the impact of the final rule could prove devastating, by significantly reducing the number of children and families served by Head Start programs,” the organization wrote.

While the rule is an important step forward from a policy perspective, it is a “double-edged sword” in terms of funding, according to Dan Wuori, the founder and president of and a former kindergarten teacher and South Carolina school district administrator. 

“They’re sort of stuck either way,” he said. “If they can’t attract teachers then they can’t serve kids. But if they have to compensate at a higher level to draw qualified staff then that — in the absence of new funding — could mean serving a much smaller number of children.”

Katie Hamm, deputy assistant secretary for Early Childhood Development at the which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an Aug. 30 interview that she believes the administration can partner with Congress to increase Head Start appropriations over time while simultaneously restructuring the current budget to put more money toward wages.

Khari Garvin, the director of the office of Head Start, told ����Ӱ�� the hope is that the changes will position the program to recruit, attract and retain the “best and brightest talent in this field,” which “translates into better developmental outcomes for children and families.” 

“The great irony … is that for too long we’ve had individuals — committed staff — working in what is an anti-poverty program, many of whom have made either poverty-level wages, or close to poverty-level wages,” he said. “And so now we’re correcting that.”

Muñeton doesn’t think Head Start teachers should have to wait so many years for this potential shift in pay, benefits and working conditions. But when — and if — it does happen, it’ll be life changing, she said. 

“I’ll be able to afford maybe purchasing a house rather than renting out of my parents’. I’ll be able to tell my husband, ‘Hey, quit the other job so we can see you more often.’ I’ll be able to pay off the debt that I’m still trying to pay off monthly,” she said.

‘A really important stake in the ground’

Head Start began as an eight-week demonstration project in the 1960s, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s . Since then, the programs have reached more than 38 million children and their families, the majority of whom meet federal low-income guidelines. Currently, it serves about 650,000 children from birth to age 5 and their families, in urban, suburban and rural areas in all 50 states.

They also connect families to community and federal assistance and can help provide a career pathway for parents into early care and education: As of almost a quarter of Head Start’s 260,000 staff were parents of current or former Head Start children. The vast majority of Head Start center-based preschool teachers nationally had a bachelor’s degree or higher in early childhood education or a related field with experience. About of education staff members are Black, 30% are Latino and the vast majority are women. 

The 1,600 local agencies are funded by the federal government, though many also tap into state and local revenue sources. For years, these agencies have struggled to hire and retain highly qualified educators, with turnover hitting 17% in

“We really have a crisis on our hands,” Hamm said.

For a single adult with one child, median child care worker pay does not meet a living wage . Salary and benefits were cited as the top reason why almost 1 in 5 staff positions were vacant nationwide in a 2023 National Head Start Association . Of the 20% of Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms that were reported closed in the survey, 81% attributed the shutdowns to staffing vacancies. 

These persistently low wages come from a century-long history of falsely dichotomizing care and education, according to Wuori, the policy expert and former kindergarten teacher.

“We think of early care as being almost an industrialized form of babysitting,” he said, “whereas education kicks in — from a policy level — maybe a few years later. And one of the side effects of that then is that the people who work with the youngest children are not respected as the professionals that they are. And a primary way that that is the case is through their compensation, which … lags well behind that of fast food workers and employees at big box stores.”

This new federal rule, he said, serves as a “really important stake in the ground” to rectify that mindset.

Teacher retention and student safety are top of mind for West Maui families and school and union leaders as an academic year marked by deadly wildfires comes to a close. 

Since August, enrollment at Lahaina’s four public schools has dropped by roughly 1,000 students. Some families are still hesitant to return their children to the campuses next year, citing concerns around emergency preparedness and the mental health toll of attending classes near the burn zone.

In addition to a declining student population, the teachers’ union predicts that Lahaina schools may face greater challenges recruiting and retaining educators next year. Some teachers say the Hawaii Department of Education has failed to support its employees after the fires by not offering additional leave and flexibility for teachers who needed to find housing and move out of West Maui. 

Lahaina teachers are also asking for more counselors and mental health support for students next school year. 

The union is now mobilizing to push the superintendent and Hawaii Board of Education to fulfill educators’ requests, including pay raises for Lahaina teachers and expanded paid leave benefits.   

DOE had already designated Lahaina as a hard-to-staff location in 2020 due to the area’s high number of teacher vacancies and emergency hires. 

“It’s just incredibly stressful for so many people,” said Jarrett Chapin, an English teacher at Lahainaluna High. 

Staffing Challenges

Even before the fires, hiring teachers in Lahaina was difficult, Chapin said. Housing was scarce, and the cost of living was high — even with the annual $5,000 bonus Lahaina teachers have received since 2020 due to severe staffing shortages in the area. 

The union has asked DOE to raise the annual bonus to $8,000 in response to the rising cost of living on Maui. The department said in March it would not fulfill the request, although superintendent Keith Hayashi said Thursday that it’s an option he’s now willing to consider. 

Hayashi added that the department has provided mental health support to students and teachers through staff trainings, partnerships with the Department of Health, online platforms and more. 

Earlier this month, the department was hiring for five teaching positions at Princess Nahienaena Elementary, King Kamehameha III Elementary and Lahainaluna High School. The department said funding for Lahaina schools will not drastically decline next year but did not specify if it will be hiring fewer teachers than usual because of reduced student enrollment. 

In Wailuku, Iao Intermediate is currently hiring seven teachers for next year, while Wailuku Elementary is hiring four teachers. Schools in other parts of Maui are facing similar hiring needs. 

Andrea Eshelman, deputy director and chief negotiator for HSTA, said she’s concerned more teachers will leave their jobs at the end of the year because of severe housing shortages in West Maui and DOE’s lackluster response to supporting faculty after the fires. HSTA previously asked DOE to provide post-disaster leave or mileage reimbursement to teachers who lost their homes in the fires and relocated from West Maui, but the department rejected the requests. 

In response, HSTA has begun a petition asking DOE to initiate a program that would allow teachers to donate their sick days to Maui teachers affected by the fires. As of Thursday, the petition received over 600 signatures from union members across the state, and over 20 teachers testified at Thursday’s BOE meeting asking the department to establish the leave bank and provide additional support for educators. 

The bank would allow Maui teachers to take paid time off to address the aftermath of the fires. 

During Thursday’s meeting, Lahainaluna teacher Michelle Abad Brummel said she lost her home in the fires and is temporarily living in South Maui. Her family spends nearly $500 each month on gas, and she’s resorted to using sick days to visit her home in the burn zone since DOE didn’t offer additional leave to teachers affected by the fires. 

“There will be one less good teacher in a school already in need,” Abad Brummel said.

Ashley Olson, a teacher at Lahainaluna, said DOE should also provide more mental health support to staff and students. DOE has made crisis counseling and mental health providers available to Lahaina staff, but Olson said she would like professionals to consistently check in with teachers and proactively offer their help.

“I’m pretty unimpressed with the progress we’ve made,” Olson said. “Do better by all of Maui.”

BOE members agreed with teachers’ requests on Thursday and said they would offer more support in the next school year. 

“We heard you loud and clear,” said board member Makana McClellan. 

Alternative Learning Options

Before the August fires, the four Lahaina public schools served around 3,000 students. Next year, their combined enrollment is expected to drop to roughly 2,000. 

In November, DOE estimated that most of the students who had not yet returned to Lahaina campuses had enrolled in other public schools on Maui. A smaller percentage of students had moved out of state or enrolled in Hawaii schools outside of the DOE. 

Rita McClintock, who lives in Kaanapali, has no plans to return her daughter to Lahaina Intermediate in the fall. In September, McClintock enrolled her daughter in Hawaii Technology Academy, a charter school that began offering hybrid classes in West Maui within a month of the fires.

The school initially offered instruction out of the Door of Faith Church in Lahaina but moved into the space formerly occupied by Kapalua’s Pineapple Grill restaurant in March.

McClintock said she believed DOE campuses had safe water and air quality after the Department of Health completed extensive testing on the schools in the fall. But she worried about whether DOE had adequate safety plans in place if another fire began near the schools. 

“I trusted the science, but I didn’t necessarily trust they had a plan in place if they got bad news,” McClintock said. 

Now, McClintock said, she plans on keeping her daughter at HTA until eighth grade. She doesn’t want to disrupt her daughter’s education, she added, and she’s found a place that offers her family stability. 

Ginny Kamohalii-Dew, community coordinator for HTA’s Lahaina campus, said they expect approximately 60% of students to return to the school next year. Many families are moving out of West Maui, she added, and can no longer make the commute to campus. The school enrolls roughly 115 students. 

The charter school placed a strong emphasis on children’s mental health and recovery this year, she said, adding that she’s especially proud of students’ end-of-year projects that reimagined what Lahaina could look like once it’s fully rebuilt.  

“If our kids leave happy this year, we’ve done enough,” Kamohalii-Dew said. 

Other families are still unsure about their children’s futures. 

Before the fires, Miriam Keo’s two children attended the Hawaiian immersion program offered at Lahaina Intermediate. Since March, Lahaina’s Hawaiian immersion students have attended classes at the temporary campus for King Kamehameha III Elementary. 

The department hasn’t decided if Hawaiian immersion students can remain on the temporary campus next year, and Keo said she’s still considering her family’s options for next year. Like McClintock, she’s not convinced students would be able to evacuate safely during emergencies but wants her children to remain in the same school as their peers. 

“I just want to keep my keiki wherever the majority goes,” Keo said.

This was originally published on .

COLUMBIA — As South Carolina schools continue to grapple with teacher shortages, one legislator is calling for fellow lawmakers to spend more time inside schools.

, said he will introduce a bill next month that would require legislators to substitute teach or volunteer at K-12 schools at least five times a year to see first-hand the problems plaguing teachers and students.

Chief among those is an ongoing shortage of teachers. South Carolina schools started the school year with nearly 1,400 teaching vacancies plus more than 200 jobs unfilled for librarians, counselors, psychologists and speech therapists. That’s a 9% increase from the year before and an all-time high, according to the supply-and-demand report released Monday by the state Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention & Advancement.

“Things are continuing to get worse,” said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, a teachers’ advocacy group. “I mean, 1,600 vacant positions is an absolutely staggering number.”

Bringing 170 legislators into schools five times a year wouldn’t fill those vacancies. But it would at least show that lawmakers are paying attention, said Kelly, who also teaches U.S. history at Blythewood High School in Richland Two.

“This is not going to solve the teacher shortage. It won’t even solve the substitute teacher shortage in this state,” Kelly said. “But it certainly has symbolic value.”

The point isn’t to solve anything, Johnson said.

And he recognizes his proposal stands little chance. He will push to at least get a hearing.

He wants to spark conversation about what really happens in schools.

“We’ve seen lawmakers come out and say they support teachers, and they want us to do what’s best for teachers. They want to invest in students. They care about students,” said Johnson, who sits on the House Education Committee. “But none of them are actually in the school.”

Johnson decided to lead by example. The father of three started substituting in August in Richland County School District One, which includes schools in downtown Columbia. He noticed things he wouldn’t have otherwise, he said, and he wants other lawmakers to have the same experience.

For example, Johnson said he realized teachers of children with disabilities have more responsibilities but receive the same pay as their colleagues who aren’t in special education classrooms.

In South Carolina, teachers are paid according to their years of experience in the classroom and their degree. The state sets the floor for every step. Most districts pay more by supplementing state aid with local property taxes. This year, the for first-year teachers with a bachelor’s degree is $42,500 — a $10,500 increase since 2018.

Johnson proposes increasing the minimum starting salary for special education teachers to $52,000.

Putting lawmakers in schools to see the normal routines could go a long way in helping them understand the challenges teachers face, said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“There is power in seeing what happens in a day-to-day school day,” said East, who is also a Rock Hill science teacher.

As far as actually filling the growing number of vacancies, pay is a major issue, East and Kelly said.

The state Department of Education is asking for $136 million in next year’s budget to raise teacher salaries by $1,500, bringing the first-year minimum to $44,000, according to state budget documents.

Last year, legislators gave school districts enough money to though how much of a raise teachers saw depended on the district. Gov. Henry McMaster has called for all teachers to be making at least $50,000 by 2026.

On top of the $2,500 boost in the salary steps, the education department is requesting $15 million to give signing bonuses to teachers in elementary, middle and special education classrooms, as well as teachers working at high-poverty schools.

Plus, the department is looking for $5 million to try out a program that would pay teachers in struggling schools and hard-to-fill subjects more when their students do better. The money would hinge on data showing student progress while learning from that teacher. this year, but that request wasn’t funded.

The budget documents did not include specifics on how much more teachers could earn or how they’d qualify, and an agency spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“While no educator answers the calling to become an educator solely for financial gain, we must better align our compensation opportunities to attract, retain and recognize those who succeed in the hardest roles,” the budget request reads.

But pay is only part of the problem, Kelly and East said.

Teachers told a state task force last year they had too many duties, not enough time to accomplish them, a lack of respect and students acting out.

While legislation can’t fix all those issues, there are steps lawmakers could take to help, Kelly and East said.

For example, Kelly pointed to the task force’s recommendation that the Legislature fund a career ladder that would allow teachers to advance in their careers without needing to become administrators. And East suggested establishing alternative schools to help support students in elementary grades who lash out at their teachers.

Still, getting legislators in schools is a good start, both teachers said.

“Any policy that increases the number of caring, dedicated adults in schools is a positive in my book,” Kelly said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

The reported late last month there was a 78% increase in multilingual students for the 2023-24 academic year compared to the last two years.

“From 2020 to 2023, the District has witnessed a staggering 78% surge in the Multilingual Learner population,” according to a press release.

District spokeswoman Nancy Deering told ����Ӱ�� the majority of new multilingual students come from Spanish speaking countries.

District officials would not say if the influx of multilingual students come from migrant families, but immigration cases have increased in the . 

And reported in the last year it has doubled the number of families they have helped, with about half migrating from Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico and Chile.  

In the 2022-23 academic year, there were more than , with 9,000 multilingual students and 6,000 — about 24% and 15% respectively.

With a 78% surge, the previous 9,000 multilingual students comes to more than 16,000 for the 2023-24 academic year, with Latino students comprising the majority of the district’s enrollment. 

In the 2022-23 academic year, there were nearly 23,000 Latino students, about 55% of the student population — compared to 36% of Black students and 7% of white students, according to the .

Newark superintendent Roger León told ����Ӱ�� the district hired close to 1,000 teachers in the past two academic years but currently has 80 vacancies mostly for multilingual and special needs teachers. 

English Language Learners

León said educators must be certified to teach multilingual students, slowing down the hiring process.

To ease these staffing shortages, León said the district has created incentives for current teachers to get the certification.

“We have a pool of staff members that are in route to get the endorsement and once they’re done that’ll be how we solve our problem,” said León.

Neither León nor Deering would elaborate on what the incentives were. 

The district also held its in August for more than 250 teachers to help English language learners pass an English proficiency test and transition out of needing multilingual services.

Special Education

One parent said staffing issues in the district has prevented her two high school children with special needs from fully thriving, oftentimes needing occupational therapy among other services that aren’t always available.

“I just see the district harboring kids on the spectrum from high functioning to low functioning all in the same classroom which is not a good idea,” she told ����Ӱ�� anonymously to protect the identity of her children. “My kids have a different level of learning and they need to be with that particular group.”

Another parent added how staffing problems prevented her 6th grade son from attending a specialized district school. 

“It’s been issue after issue after issue,” she told ����Ӱ�� anonymously to protect the identity of her son. “Every single thing, all the support I’ve been advocating for, has been a fight.”

León believes the district wouldn’t have to worry about finding special education teachers if Newark’s charter schools didn’t contribute to the problem.

“Students that have an IEP are not afforded an opportunity to have an education in Newark charter schools because they get kicked out,” said León. “So if we want to help solve this problem, the charter schools need to get it together.”

State Superintendent Elsie Arntzen said Thursday the state could see 1,000 teacher vacancies going into the upcoming school year — or roughly one in 10 positions.

“A thousand new teachers or teachers will be requested within our 928 schools across our state, our 402 school districts,” Arntzen said during the Montana Board of Public Education meeting.

Teacher pay has been an ongoing challenge in Montana, especially for rookies, and the dearth of teachers this year mirrors the shortage last school year.

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At the meeting, board members discussed teacher recruitment, retention as well as potential adjustments to licensure requirements as they related to the vacancies.

Despite boosts to their wages in recent years, Montana pays the lowest average starting salary for teachers in the country at $33,568, according to an April from the National Education Association.

The idea to change license requirements has been controversial, and educators have said Montana must maintain quality. At the meeting Thursday, however, Arntzen said a potential change in licensure standards should not be seen as diluting teacher quality, but as giving school districts more flexibility.

Some of the proposed changes include recognizing licenses for nationally board-certified teachers and increasing access for expired licensees to reenter the classroom, according to an Office of Public Instruction press .

“This is enhancing to make sure that we hand districts the ability to be able to hire,” Arntzen said.

OPI spokesperson Brian O’Leary said in an email to the Daily Montanan the number of new licenses in 2022-2023 was the lowest in five years, at 1,207. The number of licenses in the state that were renewed, upgraded and added endorsements was the second lowest in the last five years.

“Many businesses are struggling to fill positions throughout our great state, and schools are no exception,” O’Leary said.

Crystal Andrews, director of accreditation, educator preparation programs, and licensure for the state, is slated to lead a discussion on potential revisions to licensure standards Friday, according to the state board’s agenda.

At the meeting, Arntzen talked about another strategy intended to help fill vacancies. In the Teacher Residency Program through the state’s universities, students spend their fourth year of study in the classroom with a teacher mentor, with a requirement the new teacher stays in the community.

Board Vice Chairperson Susie Hedalen, who works as a superintendent in Townsend, said later in the meeting her school hired one of the residents through that program to become a full-time teacher.

“It was a lot of work for the mentoring teacher, the student teacher and the principal,” she said. “They put a lot of time and effort into it, (and) we have a great new teacher next year.”

O’Leary said OPI doesn’t hold data on all of the public school teacher vacancies in the state, but its Jobs for Teachers webpage lists 1,089 openings for teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and counselors as of Thursday.

Teaching positions make up 950 of the positions posted, O’Leary said, adding OPI can’t guarantee the listings don’t include duplicate postings, for example. He said school districts are also not required to post their job listings on the site.

The number of vacancies this time of year is consistent with last year, with O’Leary saying near the end of July 2022 there were more than 1,100 job postings on the OPI Jobs for Teachers page. The NEA reported there being more than 10,800 teaching jobs in the state.

Other efforts OPI is making include hosting job fairs to connect teachers and school districts, with the next one on Aug. 4 online. The department is also touting the expansion of the TEACH Act to increase new teacher pay and loan assistance for teachers at “impacted schools,” alternative or rural education settings.

Board member Jane Lee Hamman said she thought teacher retention should be a high priority for the next legislative session.

“We can start to think about some of the plans for structural changes and additions for the next session, because I think that’s going to be critical,” she said.

Angela McLean, in the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education, said licensure and making sure educators in all fields get to where they are needed in the state is critical.

“It’s not just enough to just make sure that we have a teacher that will stay in the more urban parts of Montana. We want to get them to some of these rural communities where they have long been needed the most,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on and .

Mapping the vacancies nationally, a recently published and crafted by three education researchers offers the latest, though incomplete, snapshot of reported teacher shortages. 

The data suggest the pandemic has exacerbated shortages in specific teaching areas and some states that have faced persistent and well-documented shortages for years, creating a patchwork of different education realities in the United States that vary from district to district and across state lines. 

Of the nine where vacancy rates are highest, Mississippi faced the highest vacancy rates, with 68 missing teachers per 10,000 students for the 2021-22 school year. In contrast, Utah’s vacancy rate was less than 1 per  10,000 students. The report does not yet compare these rates over time, because of differences in state data reporting and urgency to understand the most up-to-date vacancies.  

The report also identified another critical issue: Currently there are 163,650 “underqualified” educators — about 5% of the force nationally  — teaching without certification or outside of their subject area.  More state-level data is available for this group, showing the number of “underqualified” teachers  in some states exceeds 20,000, which has risen in the last several years.

“There are substantial vacant teacher positions in the United States. And for some states, this is much higher than for other states…. It’s just a question of how severe it is,” said Tuan Nguyen, lead author on the working paper and education researcher at Kansas State University. “The pandemic has just exacerbated the situation that was already starting to build up…just made it worse for some states.”

Nationally, an estimated 36,504 full-time teacher positions are unfilled, with the number potentially as high as 52,800, the report found.  

The vacancy estimates from Nguyen and co-authors Chanh Lam and Paul Bruno are significantly lower than the 300,000 reported by the National Education Association and (the higher estimate includes non-teaching staff such as bus drivers and school counselors). They join a host of academics attempting to make sense of shortages in the absence of , which would put vacancies, which vary school to school and district to district, into context. 

Published with the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform at Brown University, the report raises concerns about teacher education program pipelines; staffing historically hard-to-staff positions in rural areas, STEM and special education; and the lack of accurate data. 

Their work marks the first time vacancy numbers have been documented for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. as reports flow in about districts shifting to , or calling in the and to teach. 

“A lot of the things that they’re doing right now seem to be a little, quick band-aid to stop the bleeding. But it’s not going to solve this long term issue, particularly for states that have persistent shortages like Kansas, Florida and Mississippi,” Nguyen told the 74.

The highest raw numbers of open teaching positions are concentrated in the south and lower Atlantic, where about 22,000 positions are open, triple the picture in midwestern states. Alabama, which had over 3,000 vacancies in 2021-22, sits in stark contrast to Illinois, where 1,703 positions were left unfilled. 

Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi also experienced high raw number of vacancies in the 2021-22 school year, each missing at least 3,000 teachers. 

Nguyen described vacancies and staffing challenges as “ubiquitous,” but constituting a huge range. Beyond the nine states facing highest vacancy rates, another 19 have modest shortages, between 0 and 12 vacant positions per 10,000 students.  Nine others face moderate shortages, missing between 12 and 15 educators comparatively. 13 states did not share complete data and could not be compared, the researchers found.

Estimates are conservative. Not all districts provided vacancy data to their state agency. And while some states include “underqualified” teachers in their definitions of vacancy, Nguyen and coauthors only considered unfilled positions in their final tally, relying on state and federal education data along with news stories. 

Factors driving vacancies

Thousands of open posts does not mean that teachers left the classroom in droves during the pandemic, researchers at Rand, Kansas State University and Brown University told ����Ӱ��. 

Rather, three trends are unfolding simultaneously: teacher preparation programs face declining enrollment; respect for and interest in teaching has plummeted; and most districts beyond pre-pandemic numbers with federal relief aid. 

“It’s only in this year two, and really, in year three [of the pandemic] that we’ve seen an uptick in turnover, but nothing like a mass exodus, the attrition that we were concerned about,” Nguyen said.  “The teacher supply pipeline seems to be stagnating or decreasing over time. Over the last 10 years or so there has been a substantial .”

Concerns about public disrespect, low wages and legislation restricting classroom content may help explain some of the pipeline challenges and high vacancies particularly in southern states, Nguyen hypothesized.

“There’s also been increased attention to what it means to be a teacher…particularly about what teachers can or cannot teach in the state; whether or not social emotional learning is an important issue that we need to teach; how teachers may not teach anything about racism in America,” Nguyen said.

“It’s like, hey, there are these multitude of factors that are overlapping each other,” he said, “and they seem to be concentrated in the South.”