The Department of Education is hiring fewer teachers and seeing an uptick in unlicensed educators in its schools, according to a recent  for the 2024-25 academic year. 

Last year, roughly 48% of newly hired Hawaiʻi educators did not have a teacher’s license, a significant jump from the 27% of new teachers who didn’t have one in the 2020-21 academic year. The numbers include those who have completed an educator preparation program but have not yet earned a state teaching license. 

The number of unlicensed educators, also known as emergency hires, has steadily increased since the pandemic, partly due to the recent increase in pay for these workers. The state also has programs in place to help emergency hires earn their license while teaching.

This fall, DOE reported the lowest number of  in five years, largely due to the uptick in emergency hires filling open positions. Emergency hires can work in schools for up to three years while they make progress toward earning a license. 

The department hired 1,300 teachers last year, down from more than 1,600 the year before that. Of those teachers, 82% were Hawaiʻi residents — the largest percentage of resident hires DOE has seen in the past four years.

Fewer teachers also left Hawaiʻi schools last year, with 1,116 retiring or resigning from their jobs, down from roughly 1,200 the year before. Most commonly, teachers said they left their jobs because they planned to move out of Hawaiʻi. 

The state has introduced more initiatives to improve teacher retention in recent years, including bonuses for educators working in hard-to-staff positions and increasing teacher pay. 

During Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Sean Bacon said the DOE is continuing to work on recruiting local teachers. For example, he said, schools are developing more career pathways for high school students interested in becoming teachers or educational assistants after they graduate. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy and “Data Dive” is supported in part by the Will J. Reid Foundation.

When Texas lawmakers passed legislation in 2015 that created a pathway for public schools to hire more teachers without formal classroom training, one goal was to make the profession more attractive to individuals from different paths who could offer hands-on learning to students.

Some school administrators made it clear they intended to place these so-called uncertified teachers in positions where they could leverage their fields of expertise and keep them away from core areas like math, reading and special education, which would remain under the care of their most seasoned educators.

That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many longtime educators worried about their health and feeling underappreciated, underresourced and burnt out. They walked out of the classroom in droves, accelerating teacher shortages at a time when students were returning to in-person learning and schools needed them the most.

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Now some school districts are hiring uncertified teachers — some to provide instruction in core subjects — at an extraordinary pace.

In almost a decade since the law was passed, the number of uncertified teachers in the state’s public schools ballooned by 29%, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of state data. Uncertified teachers, many of whom are located in rural school districts, accounted for roughly 38% of newly hired instructors last year.

Some academic experts are dubbing the state’s growing reliance on uncertified teachers a crisis. A highlighted that kids lose three to four months of learning when they have a new teacher who is both uncertified and lacks experience working in a public school.

But with fewer people entering the profession through traditional pipelines, school districts are trying to give uncertified instructors the training and support they need to succeed in the classroom. School officials and education advocates are encouraging them to participate in teacher certification programs — and they hope lawmakers will set aside funds next year to help cover the costs.

The ask comes at a time when schools are already starved for a cash infusion. Many districts entered the school year having to spend more money than they are earning, largely because of the state’s rising cost of living and a half-decade of no increases to their base-level funding. Public school leaders remain upset that last year’s legislative sessions ended with no significant base funding increases despite the state having .

“When you have a state where their coffers are full and local school districts where their coffers are empty, or in the process of being empty, you’re going to have to have some state help to make sure that we’re funding these types of programs,” said Mark Henry, who served as Cy-Fair ISD’s superintendent for more than a decade until his retirement last year.

A tool to deal with teacher shortages

Prior to the passage of the 2015 law, known as , teachers would normally enter the profession through traditional college or university routes or via alternative certification programs, which are geared toward people who have a bachelor’s degree in a different field and need classroom training. Both pathways have seen in recent years.

The District of Innovation law was meant to give traditional public schools some of the flexibility that charter schools had long enjoyed, granting them exemptions from mandates on class sizes, school start dates and certification requirements. Before, uncertified educators in Texas could teach core classes only after obtaining and approved by the state education agency on a case-by-case basis.

With a District of Innovation , districts can now create a comprehensive educational program that identifies provisions under Texas law that make it difficult for them to reach their goals and offers ways to address those challenges. The plan must receive public input and gain local school board approval before districts can proceed with any exemptions.

Many districts have sought an exemption from the state’s teacher certification requirements to help combat their teacher shortages.

Texas has no statewide definition for , but one major indicator that points to a significant need for more teachers is the state’s teacher attrition rate, which tracks the percentage of educators who leave the field in any given year.

Since the start of the pandemic, the attrition rate has from roughly 9% to 12%, according to the Texas Education Agency. A historic 13.4% of teachers left the profession between fall 2021 and fall 2022.

The state commissioned a task force two years ago to look into the teacher shortage and make policy recommendations for legislators to address the problem, though not much of the group’s advice has been adopted into state law. The panel of educators and school administrators recommended that the state commit to respecting teachers’ time, improving training and increasing salaries. Texas ranks for average teacher pay, $8,828 less than the national average, according to the National Education Association.

The Texas House of Representatives’ Public Education Committee held a hearing in August to ask questions and gather information on the causes for the rising number of uncertified teachers and the effect on student outcomes. Lawmakers also discussed what many public education advocates see as a growing lack of respect for teachers, which the advocates say is fueling both the teacher shortage and the rise of uncertified teachers.

In recent years, Texas Republican leaders like Gov. and Lt. Gov. have routinely criticized public schools and instructors, accusing them of teaching children “woke” lessons on America’s history of systemic racism and keeping in their libraries reading materials that make inappropriate references to gender and sexuality. All the while, Abbott has been pushing for a program that would allow parents to use tax dollars to pay for their children’s private education, which public education advocates fear will plummet enrollment in public schools and ultimately result in less funding. School districts receive funding based on their average daily attendance.

“No one wants to go into something where they feel like they’re just going to be beat down day to day,” said David Vroonland, former superintendent of Mesquite ISD who now works as executive director of the LEARN. “And I think the political commentary out there right now is doing a lot of harm to bringing more people into the space. Obviously, the other is we need to pay better.”

Getting new teachers ready for the classroom

Educators who testified at last month’s legislative hearing also called on lawmakers to direct more financial resources to help teaching candidates go through high-quality preparation programs.

One such program in Brazosport ISD helped Amanda Garza McIntyre transition from being an administrative assistant at a construction company to becoming an eighth grade science teacher at Freeport Intermediate School.

McIntyre, who has a bachelor’s degree in health care administration, knew what Brazosport ISD does for children: the district helped her first-grade daughter learn how to read at grade level over the course of a semester. But starting a new career while raising her five kids seemed overwhelming, and she needed help.

The Brazosport ISD program allows aspiring teachers to earn a bachelor’s degree, teacher certification or both — at no cost. In return, program participants have to work in the district for at least three years. The program includes a paid residency that pairs candidates with a teacher mentor who works with them in a classroom for a full school year. Brazosport ISD pays for the program using funds from its own budget, grants and local partnerships.

Thanks to the hands-on training and guidance she received over the last year, which included working with some of the same children in her classroom now, McIntyre started as a full-time teacher earlier this month.

“I don’t know that I would have fully committed to going into teaching without knowing that I had that training and that preparedness to walk into a classroom and feel confident,” McIntyre said.

The task force formed to study the root causes of Texas’ teacher shortage included in its recommendations that the state fund certification programs like the one Brazosport ISD is running.

Sam Cofer, chief operating officer of Jubilee Academies, a San Antonio-based charter school district, said it makes sense for the Legislature to help fund programs like Brazosport ISD’s but argued that certification is not the only way to increase the number of capable teachers in Texas classrooms.

Jubilee Academies filled many of its teacher vacancies in the last decade with substitute instructors. The district knew it would be difficult to compete for more experienced teachers with traditional districts that could offer more competitive salaries, Cofer said, so it expanded its pool of applicants to include people with a bachelor’s degree and work experience in other fields but without teaching certification.

Since 2015, Jubilee Academies’ percentage of uncertified teachers has risen from roughly 17% to 66%. During the 2023-24 school year, 60% of new hires at all Texas charter schools were people without formal classroom training.

Cofer said the district relies on instructional coaches to provide their new hires with the support they need to adapt to their new profession. He also said the district encourages certification but doesn’t require it.

Teacher certification does prepare new hires “better in a lot of ways to be a teacher in a public school,” Cofer said. “But I also can’t be dismissive of the skill sets that may come along with people that don’t go through those programs that could also end up being effective teachers with the right amount of coaching and mentoring and guidance.”

Public education advocates are hoping the state and school districts invest in quality teacher preparation, regardless of what avenue they take to get there.

“It’s not serving students to put people in those positions that don’t have the experience they need to be successful,” said Priscilla Aquino-Garza, a former teacher who works as senior director of programs for Educate Texas, an organization focused on increasing academic achievement and educational equity for underserved children.

Shalona McCray, Longview ISD’s assistant superintendent of Human Resources and Community Relations, is grateful for the flexibility the District of Innovation law has granted schools. She said it allowed them to recruit from a more diverse talent pool as veteran educators left the profession in droves at the height of the pandemic. Since the law was passed, the district’s percentage of uncertified hires has skyrocketed from roughly 3% to 67%.

Longview ISD is committed to working with teachers to get them licensed through an alternative certification program or the district’s apprenticeship program, preferably within three years, McCray said. The District of Innovation law is a stepping stone, she said, to getting more people who care about education into the profession.

“I’m gonna have to rely on District of Innovation to go out and find some teachers who are not certified but qualified,” McCray said. “They have a bachelor’s degree, they have a passion, and then we’ll do everything we can to help them.”

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Disclosure: Educate Texas and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

Statewide, Oklahoma public schools are experiencing a shortage of bus drivers — and they’re struggling to adapt.

School districts of all sizes are having to get creative with their responses. Coweta Public Schools has had to keep students waiting to be picked up or taken home until other routes finish. Covington-Douglas Public Schools and Clinton Public Schools pay $35 an hour, and both have had positions open since before this school year.

Guthrie Public Schools has to pay overtime to their drivers for after-school events. Beggs Public Schools has had to combine routes, resulting in some that are more than two hours long.

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StateImpact analyzed every public school district in Oklahoma and found that of the 400-plus schools with hiring listings accessible on their websites or that answered a superintendent survey, over 40% showed open driver positions. About a quarter of the 80 surveyed superintendents said they or other school administrators drive a bus.

Sentinel Public Schools superintendent Jason Goostree is one of those. Sentinel is a small, rural district in western Oklahoma, about 120 miles from Oklahoma City. Most days, Goostree drives routes to and from school. He said he didn’t expect to drive buses as a superintendent and doesn’t think it will end anytime soon.

“It’s one of those things where you feel like you’re responsible for everything that happens in the district,” Goostree said. “So it’s kind of, if this is what needs to happen to make sure things go smoothly, then that’s what you’re doing.”

He recently met with his staff and rolled out a pitch for more field trip drivers. Being so far from a city center means it’s a non-starter for Sentinel to recruit drivers who don’t already work for the district or from the church across the street. A few teachers have their bus driving licenses, but he said it’s unfair to them and their students to pull them from their classrooms.

“If we have a field trip… you can’t start yanking people out of their jobs all the time,” Goostree said. “So I got one person, for sure, out of that meeting that said she’s going to do it, and I’m working on a second. My goal was three, but if I can get two more people by the beginning of next year, that will help quite a bit.”

While rural schools find unique challenges with recruitment, larger schools are also feeling the pinch.

Despite a recent staff pay boost, yearly step raises and district-provided benefits like health insurance, Stillwater Public Schools had to cancel all out-of-town field trips for the rest of the school year because it didn’t have enough drivers. Assistant Superintendent of Operations Bo Gamble said they still have six to eight positions open.

“Trying to balance getting students where they need to be for curricular needs and wants, there’s just a trade-off that you have to make,” Gamble said. “Not having the capacity to manage all of the trips — we had to make a decision on which trips needed to be focused on.”

Gamble said field trips during the school day are especially difficult if the bus doesn’t leave and return in the window between morning and afternoon routes. He said it’s slowly improving since COVID hit, but the local workforce pool isn’t back to normal.

“In my opinion, specifically in Oklahoma … we’ve lost a lot of our workforce to [cannabis] grow farms. There’s a large capacity for that workforce. And I think everybody’s being impacted by [a workforce shortage],” Gamble said. “With COVID, it was just kind of a perfect storm. … We’re starting to come back from it … but we still need people.”

When drivers aren’t there, teachers step in

Activity sponsors — like band directors and coaches — are also getting behind the wheel. Surveyed schools had varying policies about paying these teachers more to drive their students to contests and games — Stillwater, for example, pays them an hourly rate. Nearly all surveyed schools, though, require or strongly encourage their activity sponsors to get bus driving licenses.

But adding hours of driving onto an already taxing day for coaches and directors can present safety concerns.

Hunter Hanna was a band director at Valliant Public Schools in southeastern Oklahoma. After a full day of classes in the fall, he would drive his students to and from football games several hours away and contests the next day that lasted all day.

“Those little side things on the highways that err when you hit them? Yeah, those are definitely much-needed,” Hanna said.

He said he’s been so tired driving back late at night that he makes wrong turns, which adds more time to the trips. Mid-trip stops were a must — he said he had to get some fresh air and stretch his legs to stay awake.

“Highway hypnosis is one of the things they talk about in bus driver training because, I mean, seeing all these dark roads and just nothing on them… it was pretty bad,” Hanna said.

Before getting his bus driving license, Hanna had to coordinate a patchwork of vehicles to get his band students to activities. There was a minibus that didn’t require specific licensure, a school vehicle and parents driving their personal minivans. To avoid having to finagle that, he made the call to get his license.

Hanna’s district didn’t require him to, and it paid for training and testing. Band director Whitney Callen’s district, Newcastle Public Schools, also doesn’t require activity sponsors to get bus driving licenses, though she said she was asked in her interview if she would. Several band directors and coaches who spoke to StateImpact for this story reported the same.

“I explained that at my previous district, it was not an expectation because our head director was very clear about — his staff would not drive because of the amount of hours that we worked as band directors,” Callen said. “And they seemed a little bit put off by that.”

She said she agreed to get her license — on the stipulation that she would not drive on especially long days.

“And they were like, ‘Oh, for sure. We definitely always get drivers for our directors if it’s a long weekend,’” Callen said.

Callen experienced unexpected medical issues that kept her from getting her license this year, but she watched the head band director drive those especially long days the district had said it would prioritize finding drivers for. Her colleague downs energy drinks and has asked her to sit behind him and talk to him so he stays awake.

“The school district did not follow through on that. And so when I saw that, I was like, yeah, I’m not getting my CDL because this is not a safe environment for students or me. I shouldn’t have that pressure,” Callen said. “So it does make me feel guilty, but at the same time, it makes me feel confused — why is this even something that we put on people or ask them to do?”

As the shortage of drivers persists, districts are filling in the gaps with teachers like Hanna and administrators like Goostree. They’re also upping pay, canceling trips, packing buses, doubling up routes and staggering start times.

Bo Gamble at Stillwater Public Schools said he thinks they can get staffing levels back up before the start of the new school year. The district advertises, holds hiring events and provides incentives for current employees. And true to form, he made a final pitch at the end of his interview:

“If you know anybody, we’re still hiring. We need drivers,” Gamble said. “I may be a little bit biased, but I think Stillwater Public Schools is a great place to work — Stillwater’s a great place to be.”

This  was originally published by . StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership of Oklahoma’s public radio stations which relies on contributions from readers and listeners to fulfill its mission of public service to Oklahoma and beyond.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

Updated Jan. 25

In 2022, only one state, Arizona, had more chronically absent students than Alaska, where more than missed enough school to be academically at-risk, according to a national nonprofit.

That means nearly half of Alaska students missed at least 10% of the school year in the most recent available data. In a presentation to the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, said chronic absenteeism rates have doubled nationwide since the pandemic and Alaska is no exception.

“Part of why you want to notice chronic absence and make sure that kids have good attendance is because it ultimately gets to those outcomes that we really care about,” she said.

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The organization chronic absenteeism as missing 10% or more of school days for any reason.

Data collected by Attendance Works showed that the increases in chronic absence in the state are occurring at the same time as the state’s scores on national standardized tests are dropping. “I think something like 25% of that decline is explained by attendance, the increases in absences actually,” Chang said.

Data also showed the second graders who were chronically absent were less likely to be able to read at grade level than their peers who were not chronically absent. Chang said that the consequences could persist and manifest as poor performance in middle school and a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school.

Before the pandemic, nearly half of the state’s schools experienced “extreme chronic absence,” where 30% or more students are chronically absent. In the 2021-2022 school year, 86% of Alaska schools experienced extreme chronic absenteeism.

Chang said when students show up everyday to school, it builds routine, reduces stress, creates a sense of security, and increases engagement.

“What happens in school is not just instruction, but all those relationships and the opportunities to learn and develop with peers, as well as with adults, when you go to school,” she said. “It gives you greater access to resources, whether that’s mental health, meals — meals is something that we really saw during the pandemic, tutoring, mentoring, technology or also those extracurriculars — sports, music — that really help develop a whole person. And then attendance really matters for learning.”

Chang pointed to underlying causes of absenteeism, such as trauma, housing or food insecurity, lack of challenging or culturally responsive education, or lack of meaningful relationships with adults at school — especially given staff shortages, her presentation noted.

Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, said she would like to see guidance from the Department of Education and Early Development on policy approaches so that the Legislature can support schools and districts and address what she called a “clearly highly impactful issue.”

Tobin noted that the presentation showed that culturally relevant education is among the solutions to chronic absenteeism. She said she is looking at tribal compacting and ways of decolonizing education in the state as potential ways to address the different ways of learning and knowing in Alaska’s communities.

“Sometimes our students are absent because they’re hunting or they’re fishing, or they’re spending time with their grandparent, or they may be skin sewing with an elder. And sometimes the way that we catalog learning within a Western construct, may not necessarily fit our state,” she said.

Tobin said that she was caught off guard by how much absenteeism can affect reading outcomes, a metric that legislators aimed to improve when they passed the in 2022.

“The Alaska Reads Act was so important to me when it comes to creating that statewide understanding that every child has a right to learn to read. That right also means that you have to get to school,” she said. “We can’t just set policy and forget it.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

The latest federal data on the public education workforce, released Tuesday, shows 45% of leaders said they were understaffed as the new school year began. That’s down from just over half last year. But the vast majority of schools say they’re still struggling to hire enough teachers and other staff, including classroom aides, bus drivers and mental health professionals. 

In the latest results from the School Pulse Panel — a National Center for Education Statistics survey — over 1,300 administrators reported having the hardest time hiring enough elementary and special education teachers as well as classroom aides and custodial staff. 

“You used to have thousands of applicants for every one vacancy. You don’t have that anymore,” said Mary Elizabeth Davis, superintendent of the Henry County Schools, outside Atlanta. Her team tried to attract candidates this year at local fairs, festivals and civic events, but still has about 100 vacancies districtwide. “We actually had recruiting tables at our high school graduations.” 

While conditions vary from district to district, the overall uptick in since the pandemic has forced district and school leaders to rely on substitutes, contract with virtual teaching companies and offer attractive incentives to lure new hires. Meanwhile, temporary federal relief funds offered the chance to create new positions to help with academic recovery efforts, but there haven’t always been enough candidates to fill those roles. Whether job seekers are leaving for other districts or finding positions outside of education, they clearly have the upper hand in this current market.

“It is harder to hire than it was pre-pandemic,” said Chad Aldeman, a researcher who focuses on the teacher job market. “The labor force participation rate is really high, unemployment is really low and basically anyone of working age who wants a job can find it.” 

Recent confirms that what many have called a crisis in teacher employment is slightly less severe this year. Compared to last fall, there’s a 2% increase in the number of public school employees — or about 150,000 more. But districts have to work harder to win over those sought-after candidates and get creative when they can’t. 

To fill the gaps, the Henry district has hired more teachers from overseas and attracted 25 new college graduates through a “retention scholarship.” In exchange for a two-year commitment, the district covers the cost of their teaching credential program. 

Henry has also joined the growing number of districts across the country using virtual teaching companies. While a substitute or aide supervises students in the classroom, licensed teachers provide instruction remotely — sometimes from several states away. Davis tells parents the remote arrangement is far better than using a substitute. Without it, she added, their children might not be able to take Spanish III or A.P. Calculus.

“This is what kids are going to need to be able to do in college, so we actually see this as a good thing,” she said. 

‘Double-edged sword’

Even districts with traditionally stable workforces have had to take unusual measures to ensure students have teachers. The 5,600-student Rush-Henrietta Central School District, south of Rochester, New York, typically loses no more than five teachers a year. This past summer, Superintendent Barbara Mullen saw 28 leave, mostly to neighboring districts that offer more money. She organized a job fair — something the district has never had to do.

“We issued a press release. I went on the news,” she said. “People were walking in off the street.” 

When that effort only filled 12 positions, she gave educators an unexpected pay raise — a minimum of $1,600 for veteran teachers and up to $5,000 for newer teachers. Non-teaching staff also received raises. With federal relief funds expiring next year, she said staff members recognize there could be leaner years ahead.

“I needed to send a strategic message that compensation is important and working conditions are important,” she said.

Like many districts, Rush-Henrietta uses a grow-your-own approach to address staff shortages. Parents can work as interns in the district’s Cub Care Zone afterschool program and then take the exam to become a teaching assistant.

Other districts offer an accelerated route to a teaching job to classroom aides, professionals changing careers and even those . States were long before the pandemic, but have expanded those policies to address the current emergency. 

But such actions can also leave holes to fill. 

Kimberly Winterbottom, principal of Marley Middle School in Glen Burnie, Maryland, said her state offers so many to become a teacher that it can be harder to find candidates still willing to work as substitutes and classroom assistants — the staff members schools have been relying on to give students extra support. 

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” she said.

Her school had 35 open positions this year. She was able to fill them, but candidates, she said, weighed offers between multiple districts and have grown choosy about which grade levels they want to teach. 

“The candidate holds the cards,” she said.

As the numbers show, however, leaders say this fall feels like more of a return to earlier years when it was tough to find teachers in areas such as science and special education, but shortages didn’t overwhelm the system. In several cases last year, districts even had to because there weren’t enough teachers.

Davis, in Henry County, said one sign of progress is that 89% of substitute positions have been filled this fall, compared to 40% last year. 

“Part of the retention challenge was exhaustion. People were doing multiple people’s jobs,” she said. “We’ve not arrived, but we’re on a path to people being able to do their job most of the day and to start feeling effective at it. That will turn the corner for us.” 

A program aimed at supporting and retaining Alaska principals will more than triple its participation this year, coordinators told the state’s Board of Education at its October 5th meeting. The state’s two largest districts will join the Alaska School Leadership Academy, increasing its ranks from 36 to 118 principals.

Lisa Parady, executive director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators, helped revive the program in 2018 with former Department of Education and Early Development Commissioner Michael Johnson.

“We’re here to share the good news that it’s working,” she said.

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Parady said Alaska’s principal turnover rate statewide was around 38% when the program started. Now, her data shows the turnover rate is below 25%.

Jennifer Rinaldi, the principal lead for the program, said strong principals have a stabilizing effect on the whole school and can increase teacher retention.

“Our overarching goal for the ASLA program is really increased stability within our schools in our communities,” she said. “We want positive teacher retention in our buildings, and we know that’s going to lead to student achievement.”

Rinaldi said the principals they mentor ask for more support with four main areas: family engagement, staff supervision, recognizing and resolving issues effectively, and public advocacy.

“Our goal is to support their instructional focus by providing professional development in these areas and really enhancing that institutional leadership,” she said.

The program is a state-grant-funded partnership between the Education Department and the Alaska Council of School Administrators. It is a two-year program that matches school principals with mentors.

The number of mentors is growing also. Last year, 25 veteran educators participated; this year, the program will have 61 mentors. The program’s data shows that more than 70% of principals that sign up for the program complete it.

Sam Jordan, the grant director, said the program is foundational to the success of the state’s public school system.

“By focusing our efforts on the support of early career principals, we are rightly investing in the people who serve as linchpins in schools around our state,” he said. “Principals set the school climate and the instructional culture in each school by building their effectiveness and competence as leaders and promoting their retention over longer periods of time.”

He said that strengthens the stability of the entire public school system and allows schools to focus more resources on student achievement.

The board and DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop asked to see data that shows the correlation between student achievement and principal retention. Dale Cope, the program’s evaluator, said that the group would like to track that, but since school testing has changed the program is waiting for more more data to track that correlation.

“We want to move in that direction. We need to, in order to show that success. We know it’s working, but now we need to show those student outcomes that really support that,” Parady said.

Parady said that the program is effective, but the need for increased principal and teacher retention is still great.

“We’re still experiencing incredible turnover,” 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. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

WARWICK — Head Start programs in Rhode Island need more funding to tackle a staffing shortage in the fiscal year 2024 budget, or face imminent collapse.

That was the message program leaders, advocates, and parents gathered Tuesday at CHILD, Inc.’s Centerville Road location to send to the General Assembly as it prepares to vote on the budget later this week.

“We’re going to see a breakdown of the early childhood education system in Rhode Island in the next couple of years,” Mary Varr, the executive director of Woonsocket Head Start Child Development Association, Inc., said at the press conference.

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About 30 advocates gathered to call on policymakers to increase the current allocation of $8 million for early childhood programs by an additional $6.5 million in Gov. Dan McKee’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposal. The budget is scheduled for a debate and vote on the House floor June 9 and June 10.

The advocates said policymakers need to increase funding to insure access to all Rhode Island children to early childhood programs like Head Start, a free federal preschool program for low-income toddlers and pre-school age children launched as one of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs in the 1960s.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take to make our littlest children our top priority,” Khadija Lewis Khan, executive director of Beautiful Beginnings Childcare Center, a Head Start provider in Providence. “It’s very shortsighted your state to de-invest in early childhood education.”

The group called on the General Assembly to invest the following:

$3 million in state general revenue money to Head Start and Early Head Start programs to help programs compensate teachers and staff and reopen classrooms.
$2 million in federal or state funding to raise the family income required for Head Start programs from 200% to 225% of the federal poverty level. Currently, Rhode Island’s family income cutoff is $49,720 for a family of three.
$1.5 million put towards increased pay for workers in early childhood education.

When asked for comment, Speaker of the House K. Joseph Shekarchi, a Warwick Democrat, said the House of Representatives was looking into the funding.

“There are always issues that need to be evaluated after the passage of the budget by the House Finance Committee,” Shekarchi said in an email. “This is one of them.”

Senate President Sen. Dominick Ruggerio, a North Providence Democrat, and Gov. Dan McKee did not respond to requests for comment.

Staffing crisis

A major motivator behind the call is a staffing shortage, leading to the closure of 30 of the 108 Head Start programs in Rhode Island since 2020 and 11 of the 40 total Early Head Start programs.

“Seeing the staff crisis and classes having to close,” Roshana Perry, a teacher at Joyful Noise Child Care, a West Warwick pre-school, said, “it’s really sad.”

Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island Association Education of Young Children, said there are currently about 6,000 child care workers in Rhode Island, though there currently is no central database.

Though numbers are hard to come by, child care facility operators noted that low wages in the industry have led to an exodus forcing the classroom closures.

“It’s a crisis,” Khan said. “We need money to elevate the level of income of our employees.

“We are behind other states in our area and I don’t think that’s what we want to be known for.”

David Caprio, president and chief executive officer of Children’s Friend, said his staff shrank since their pre-pandemic number of 450 to 405 presently.

“I’m not going to say all,” he said, “but many did cite the wage as reason for their leaving.”

The median hourly wage for a child care educator in Rhode Island was $13.26 in 2021, according to the Rhode Island Kids Count 2023 Factbook. That rate increased by slightly more than a dollar for preschool educators. Hildebrand said the requested budget increase could go towards increasing that pay.

“You’re getting paid to work more at Target,” Varr, the director of a Woonsocket Head Start program, said. “Is it really that difficult to find the dollars?

“We can’t spend less than 1% [of the budget] on our children?”

Hildebrand, the association director, said advocates could only pray that policy makers live up to Rhode Island’s motto.

“Hope,” she said. “That’s all we have for the next two days.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

To mark the 24 months since schools shut down because of COVID-19, The 74 spoke with parents, educators, researchers and students across the U.S. We are running some of these interviews in their entirety to give complete accounts of where we’ve been and where some think we’re going. 

Beth Lehr, an assistant principal at Sahuarita High School, near Tucson, Arizona, was named the state’s Assistant Principal of the Year in 2020. A strong advocate for educators, she is dismayed by the extent to which political divisions over the pandemic and other hot-button education issues have left her teachers feeling overwhelmed, dreading to open their emails.

In a February interview, Lehr candidly revealed that she is not immune to such pressures. After she applied for a principal position in her district, she expressed some ambivalence. “‘Why? Why did I just do that?” she recalled thinking. “I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the stuff I dislike about my job outweighed the stuff that I like about it, but it’s hit or miss on a daily basis.” A mother of two, who saw her own children struggle with the isolation of virtual learning, Lehr said students have lost a lot more than academics during the pandemic. “If we don’t address those things,” she said, “the academic piece is never going to come back.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: Give me a little background on your district.

Beth Lehr: The town of Sahuarita is attached to a retirement community. Green Valley is 55 and over and Sahuarita has families. It’s a very interesting dynamic. Our district covers 606 square miles, so it incorporates a number of very rural areas. We have some [families on] ranches. That means they’re pretty remote and rural, and they don’t have real great internet access. We also have a large farming community with a lot of Hispanic families, some who are undocumented.

How did remote learning impact your students?

The biggest struggle was just that feeling of isolation among our students, especially the students in rural areas. It wasn’t simple for them to get on their bike and ride to their friend’s house or meet in the neighborhood, because they’re 50 miles away. 

What did they do?

Oh my God, the soap dispensers were destroyed over and over and over again. We had to replace sinks. We had to replace toilets — not because they were stolen, but because they were destroyed. The older students were super-annoyed by the freshman because then we ended up having to lock our bathrooms during lunch. 

The problem-solving that they’re [supposed to learn] over seventh and eight grade, they didn’t learn. The relationship skills that you refine when you’re in middle school, they didn’t do. A lot of the stuff that we were seeing at the beginning of the school year is very much what I would see when I was teaching middle school. 

We’ve also had an increase in sexual infractions — not necessarily assaults. It’s consensual, but it’s much more frequent on our campus this year. This is my seventh year as assistant principal, and this year, hands down, we have had more issues with kids getting caught in positions that high schoolers should not be in. Maybe once a year, we’d have kids getting caught having sex on campus. It’s definitely increased this year.

Is that related to the pandemic?

I can’t do causality. I can just say this is what I’ve seen. 

Arizona also has probably one of the worst sex education programs in the country. [The legislature] recently reintroduced where sex education programs cannot talk about homosexuality, other than it being an aberrant behavior. They’re pushing through an anti-trans bill that says trans girls can’t be in sports, which by the way, is not an issue. That’s where the frustration is. Arizona is pushing through all of these hot-button things that the super-conservative think tanks and [political action committees] are doing.

He wanted to target the funds to schools not requiring masks?

It was like Ducey said, “If you follow my direction and do not have any COVID protocols, I’ll give you the money.” The federal government was quick to say, “No, no. That’s not how any of this works.” [Ducey] actually because [they weren’t] letting him spend the money the way he wanted. He came out with an saying essentially that if your child’s school closes ever, for any amount of time, we will give you X amount of money that you can take to a private or charter school — doubling down again on anti-public health measures. As it turns out, when you don’t have a mask mandate, more kids get sick. My district does not have a mask mandate, so we are sending home multiple children.

Have you seen fatigue in your teachers? Are some calling in sick? 

Teachers have been stepping up, but they’re so tired. They’re essentially running three different classrooms in each class period. You have the kids who are sent home because they’re COVID positive and they’re sick so they’re not doing anything. You have the kids who get quarantined. Even though my teachers are keeping up all their Google classrooms and hosting virtual tutoring and sometimes live-streaming their classes, maybe 10 percent of those kids are actually taking advantage of what the teachers are doing. Then they have the kids who are in front of them.

It’s so overwhelming, and they don’t have prep periods because we don’t have any substitutes. We try to protect their prep, but we only have three administrators. If we have six teachers with no coverage, sometimes it has to be the other teachers [covering the classes], and we can’t have all three administrators not available because it’s still a high school and we still have the everyday high school stuff.

Have you lost any teachers mid-year?

Yes. We lost one teacher at our fall break. It was too much for her physical well-being, and her mental well-being. Her position was filled by a long-term sub [until early February].

My site has had very low turnover. I do not foresee that being the case next year. I have one teacher. This is her ninth year. She has already resigned for next year. She said, “I can’t do this anymore. I dread coming to work every day.” 

I have teachers who are brand new to the district who are frustrated because they caught COVID and they have to use all of their personal sick days to stay home.

Do people feel like the pandemic is ending?

There are kind of two camps. There’s the one camp of “This too shall pass,” and then there’s the other camp of “Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.” Anybody who was on the fence about education is weighing if the parts that they love about the job are still outweighing the parts that they don’t love. Actually, the teacher who resigned said, “You know, I love the day-to-day of being in front of our kids. The second I have to open my email or grade their assignments is when I realize why I resigned.” The emails. The constant onslaught of the very vocal unhappy parents. We have some amazing families, but we don’t hear the “Thank yous” as often as we hear the “You sucks.”

It’s so hard to see the end, and it’s so overwhelming. What I’ve heard more than anything this year from my teachers is, “We thought that last year was hard. This year is 10 times harder.” We’ve had very, very low turnover. I do not foresee that being the case next year. 

I was looking at The 74, and I read the headline about this not being the great resignation for teachers. That’s just because it’s not the end of the year, and teachers have too much integrity to leave their kids in the middle of the year unless it’s a dire scenario. We are going to see it, and it is going to be bad. In December of 2020, Arizona had 2,500 unfilled teaching positions. I guarantee you, we’re going to have pretty darn close to 4,000 for next school year. We don’t have anybody in the pipeline to fill them. Our profession has been vilified and de-professionalized quite successfully.

Did you ever feel like, “I’ve done this long enough and now is the time to go?”

All the time. I’m still feeling that. I’m so torn. I’ve applied for a principal position within the district, but at the same time I’m like, “Why? Why did I just do that? What am I thinking?” I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the stuff that I dislike about my job has outweighed the stuff that I like about it, but it’s hit or miss on a daily basis. 

What keeps you positive ? 

It’s 100 percent the kids.

Is there anyone in particular?

There is a student who is going to graduate — he’s going to graduate a little late, but I don’t care, he’s going to graduate. I know that our school is home for him. He doesn’t have a supportive household. Everyday that I see him and his sister at school, I say, ‘Yeah, you guys made it. Thank God.” This is a family who was dropping off the radar when we were virtual. I said, “Forget that. This is not going to happen. I’m going to bring you the paperwork for you guys to fill out so that I can get you internet. I’m going to bring you computers.” 

You went to their house? 

I took computers. I showed up at random times to figure out why they weren’t in their classes.

One focus this year has been freshman, specifically to prevent them from failing their classes or from failing too many. We have time built into our lunch where teachers have office hours. We made those office hours mandatory if students had lower than a 65 percent, because if you go into your finals with lower than a 65 percent, the chances are very high that you’re going to fail the class. 

Of course, the students who need to go tend to be the students who don’t go. I have not started it yet this semester. A couple of the students are not doing well again, and they said “Ms. Lehr, are you going to start it again? When can we come in?” I said, “You want to come in with me?” That’s from 14-year-old kids who before I had to beg to come. That’s very heartening.

Some of these freshmen I know are making stupid choices. I had a conversation with a kid who at the beginning of the year was just as quick to tell me to “F… off.” But now, here we are where a relationship has been built.

How have you kept yourself sane?

I do not check my email at all on the weekends. My husband and I will go hiking, and I try to spend my weekends solely with my children. I have a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old. 

We kept them in a remote option all last year, but because my husband and I were both at school, that meant that they were home by themselves. They were 8 and 10. On a personal level, my kids had to grow up a lot faster than I would have preferred, but now they have this certain level of independence that’s really cool. It reminds me of when I was a kid in the ‘80s. Your parents are working. Here’s a key. Don’t tell anyone your parents aren’t home.

How did remote learning affect them?

My daughter is very intelligent and very sneaky. She’s a “how-can-I-work-the-system” kid. All year last year, she was trying to find different ways to make us think she was doing her work. She got caught every time, and then the real-world consequences hit her at the beginning of this school year. She was so used to being advanced. She was in fifth grade, so she thought, “When I go into middle school, I’m going to be in pre-algebra, and then I’m going to be able to be in algebra when I’m in seventh grade.” The thing that she didn’t do all fifth grade was math. You can’t skip a year of math and then go into pre-algebra. That was a super hard lesson for her. It’s kind of actually a good thing, but socially she struggled immensely. There was a definite decline in her mental well-being because she is such a social person.

My son is not particularly social. My son is very quick to rise to frustration, and with that comes some acting out. Because it was just him and his sister at home, there were sometimes some physical altercations between them. Nobody was seriously injured or anything, but that was definitely not something we had seen in the past. There were holes in our walls from my son digging his pencils into them that we had to patch. There was a computer screen that we had to replace because it magically cracked somehow.

What do you think schools have learned from all of this?

I’ve had a lot of teachers really rethink their philosophies — some of my most dyed-in-the-wool [teachers]. This has truly opened their eyes when they’ve seen the disparities. Not everybody’s home looks the same. When we first started doing all of the remote teaching, we had a lot of really serious conversations about requiring cameras to be on or not. A lot of our teachers were like, well, “Why wouldn’t the camera be on?” They never took into account that there might be 10 people in a two-bedroom house. There might be somebody being slapped, hit, cut, whatever while they’re there. They might be embarrassed because they’re doing your class from their car in the McDonald’s parking lot.

What do you think the education system learned?

I don’t know. It’s like, “OK, we figured this out.” Well, we didn’t. For example, we have a guest Wi-Fi that a lot of our students use. It was shut down. They didn’t tell any of us until the day they shut it down. Didn’t ask us. We have a whole bunch of students who are using their own personal devices because we’re not a 1-to-1 district. They don’t have data. They can only use it when they’re on Wi-Fi. All of the stuff that we’re telling our teachers to use — Pear Deck, Kahoot, Duolingo — now all the sudden, students can’t access it. 

Our district is woefully behind on the infrastructure. This was highlighted in 2020. We’ve had two years. Why are we still so far behind? I know that it’s not malicious. I know that it’s not ill will. I know that it’s not because they don’t care. But why is it still not done? 

What do you think schools have learned about working with parents? 

The hardest part of my job is never the students. All of these laws that are passing, if you ask our students, they think they’re terrible. We have a number of students who are very upset because their parents won’t let them get vaccinated. How do we meet the needs of the student when the student has different desires and needs than what the parent wants for them? It’s walking that fine line. I think that we’re doing it. We keep open communication with parents, but we still try to honor the student. 

We’ve definitely had to learn how to redirect tone. We’ve had to step in a little bit more when it comes to our front office and the people who definitely don’t get paid enough to deal with it. When parents say, “This person was rude to me,” we’ve been OK with saying, “Were you polite to them?” My health assistant walked away from a parent yesterday, and I said, “That sounds fine. I would have done it, too.”

My school has not necessarily had some of the higher profile things, but the school that I just applied to for the principal position did make . The parents dragged [their daughter] in and said, “She’s coming [to school]. You’re violating her rights by not letting her be here.” 

She was quarantined?

Yes, and she’s saying, “It’s fine, it’s fine.” These parents literally picked that hill to die on, and they were arrested. Now they’re all facing charges, including the poor girl. Our neighboring district is one where the business owner was live streaming as he and two people took zip ties to the school to do a on the principal. That is not a citizen’s arrest. That is kidnapping. 

There is still hope and the kids are just so happy when they get to be there. One of the things we miss is that brief shining moment in March, April and May of 2020 when people really truly started to appreciate what teachers did. I’m really sad that that didn’t stick.

You talked about the students’ immaturity. What about academic growth? Are you seeing improvements now that they’re back in school? 

The learning loss is going to be there. There’s going to be a new norm, but trying to jam more and more and more down their throats is not helping. Continuing to create these high-stakes environments and making kids feel less because of something that was totally out of their control is not helping. Meeting kids where they are is. Teachers need to be able to have the ability to meet the kids where they are without fearing the loss of their job or the loss of pay. We’ve all had too much loss. 

Why do they have to learn all these things, right? They have to learn it to be successful in the future. Great, what does that success look like? How are we redefining success, because honestly, right now, for some of these kids, success is getting out of bed and showing up. If we provide an environment for them that makes them get up and be there — when that’s the last thing they want to do — that is success. They technically had academic learning loss, but they’ve lost so much other stuff. If we don’t address those things, the academic piece is never going to come back. 

“As much as it breaks my heart to admit this, I have to be honest — I don’t know if I want him to do it,” she told lawmakers Tuesday during a  hearing on school staff shortages. “Not unless our teachers are finally provided with the support they need to do the job properly.”

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And in just , Esposito-Visgitis outlined the challenges facing educators, warning of possible early retirements and less interest in the profession resulting from limited resources and burnout.

Teachers are “wearing more hats than we ever thought possible,” Esposito-Visgitis testified. Educators also serve as counselors, security aides, therapists, referees, surrogate parents, mediators, and mask monitors who are losing their planning periods while covering for their colleagues amid a national staffing crisis folded into the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Any one of these elements — retirements, departures, and fewer new teachers — is a cause for concern. Taken together? We are soon facing the teacher shortages that have plagued other states for a number of years now,” she cautioned.

Before the pandemic, there was already a growing staffing shortage, especially among classroom substitutes, and COVID-19 has only exacerbated educational challenges. This has resulted in teachers losing their preparation periods and lunch breaks to cover for their colleagues and administrators consolidating classrooms due to limited resources.

Adam McCormick, a teacher in the Scranton School District, told lawmakers that “under normal circumstances,” he would have taken a professional day to appear before lawmakers. Instead, he asked school administrators to coordinate a schedule, so he could still teach on Tuesday and not “tax the already tight schedules of my colleagues and students.”

Shortages also are not limited to the classroom. Ahead of the 2021-22 school year, districts nationwide reported a , which forced some schools to shut down in-person learning or find alternative ways to provide transportation to and from school each day.

In December, the Republican-controlled General Assembly tried to alleviate the burden by passing ,  by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, that gave schools added flexibility to fill classroom vacancies during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years.

Rich Askey, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, praised the bill as a step toward solving the shortage by expanding the pool of those eligible but urged better pay to help recruit and retain substitutes.

On Monday, Askey testified that Pennsylvania has seen a 66 percent decline in Instructional I certificates, the most basic teaching certification, issued to in-state graduates and a 58 percent decline in certificates issued to graduates planning to work out-of-state.

“This is not sustainable,” he said. “And we anticipate it will continue to get worse.”

The cost of attaining a bachelor’s degree paired with maintaining certification is one of the top barriers for those who want to enter the teaching profession and stay in the classroom, Askey testified. He added that it’s almost impossible for teachers with high student loan debt to remain in the field, especially those working in states with low salaries.

“Moreover, we must remember that teachers do not just get a bachelor’s degree,” he said. “There are fees associated with assessments to achieve certification, certification fees to [the Pennsylvania Department of Education], costs for the 24 post-baccalaureate credits required to get an Instructional II certificate, and finally, the ongoing costs associated with professional development for the rest of their career.”

Panelists looked to a , with one Republican co-sponsor, as a potential solution to help address some of the challenges facing school districts. 

The legislation, authored by Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, would establish high school career and technical education programs designed to provide students with hands-on experience to career pathways and kick-start the training and credentialing process for free. 

The bill also expands dual enrollment programs and establishes a Diversification and Workforce Fund, which would provide grants to colleges to increase diversity in teaching programs. Finally, the legislation would mandate that the state Department of Education collect and publish data, set goals, and coordinate efforts to recruit and retain teachers.

Larisa Shambaugh, chief talent officer for the School District of Philadelphia, also stressed the importance of student loan forgiveness for educators, similar to the recent relief program for nurses and other front-line health workers.

Sen. James Brewster, D-Allegheny, a former teacher, said Republicans in the General Assembly are the biggest challenge to education investment and reform.

“The answer is money,” Brewster said. “And the votes we need [are] on the other side of the aisle.”

One day before Tuesday’s hearing, Senate and House Democrats announced a $3.75 billion spending plan for education, staff recruitment and retention, and classroom resources. 

The proposal, which the lawmakers hope to pass as part of the 2022-23 state budget, would use $2.75 billion out of the general fund and $1 billion from unspent federal American Rescue Plan funds allocated to Pennsylvania last year.

Although Wolf said he would consider the spending proposal as he prepares his budget recommendations, there are signs of pushback from GOP budget officials.

In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairperson Pat Browne, R-Lehigh, said the Democrats’ proposal “far outstrips our current revenue capacity and places our financial position in a multi-billion dollar deficit when the federal stimulus period is over.”

He added: “A historic tax increase will be the only means to maintain this commitment in the wake of the massive challenges of a global pandemic, record inflation, and labor shortages affecting employers across our commonwealth.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John Micek for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on and .

Food drives were back in a big way, with schools reporting record donations. With the pandemic pushing up food prices, classes took up lessons in budget friendly Thanksgiving feasts and spending money locally. The annual Thanksgiving high school football game returned. Schools celebrated staff with food giveaways to recognize work above and beyond over the last 20 months. 

It wasn’t all good news, but even difficult circumstances were couched as celebrations: Staff shortages and burnout meant extended Thanksgiving break, giving students and staff the entire week off.

From record-breaking food drives to practical lessons and more, here’s how schools are “giving thanks” in 2021:

A middle school in Pittsburgh has held Thanksgiving food drives for 20 years, but this year they collected more food than ever — a record 12,000 pounds for families in need. “Last year was a little bit of a setback with COVID and this year we wanted to come back real strong,” science teacher Kevin Gennaula CBS Pittsburgh.

First graders from Valley View Elementary School in McHenry, Illinois, proudly posed with items they brought in for their school’s food drive. “We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season!!” teacher Dana Clingingsmith tweeted.

In St. Louis, Missouri, students welcomed back a beloved tradition that was cancelled last year because of the pandemic. Excitement for Webster Groves and Kirkwood high schools’ annual Thanksgiving Day football game was at an “all time high.”

In Washington state, East Rowan High School students took a close look at grocery prices pushed up because of the pandemic and practiced budgeting meals in Ashley Edmonds’ class. 

Students also got a “real life” lesson in Mrs. Jones’ math class at Pleasant Valley Primary School in Vancouver, Washington, calculating online costs for budget-friendly Thanksgiving provisions.

Rather than buying store made pumpkin pies, high school students in Fruitport, Michigan, learned “valuable lifelong skills” and prepared homemade meals: 

The pandemic inspired many to spend their money locally and shop at small businesses. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, high school students partnered with a local food hub for an “eat local Thanksgiving challenge” preparing 7,500 made-from-scratch meals.

Masks and gloves, spotted at this California school’s outdoor turkey day celebration, were still an important part of in-person festivities.

In the spirit of being thankful for all school staff do to keep campuses a safe space for students, Clear Spring high school students in League City, Texas, put together 16 Thanksgiving Baskets for their custodians. “We are so thankful for all they do for our school and all the help they give us!,” they tweeted.

In Florida, school bus drivers, cafeteria and custodial staff also received turkeys for their dedication to Jupiter high school.

A school in El Paso, Texas, recognized this school year has been nothing short of a challenge and gifted faculty a full Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkeys. Principal Jon Flores thanked them for their “relentless work this school year,” and for “their commitment to our kids.”

Before leaving for Thanksgiving break, school officials at Harlan High School in San Antonio, Texas, took a moment to thank a student named Joel for volunteering his time during lunch to help pick up trash in the cafeteria. 

But in between posts of in-person celebrations were a steady stream of school closure announcements. Districts facing staff shortages and increasing COVID cases extended Thanksgiving break, focussing on the additional time off as an expression of staff appreciation. 

“While this is something that has not been done before, we felt that there’s never been a more appropriate time to show our appreciation and recognition of efforts made each and every day across our district.” said Brevard Public School board chair Misty Belford in a recorded announcement.

She made the jump to teaching when two years of working in the business office of a medical center didn’t pan out. At this new school nearby her old district and with a similar student population, she felt ready to take this new leap.

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Then she immediately worried.

“Will my district hold me?” she wondered.

Because of a clause in her contract at her previous district, she wasn’t able to start her new position for two months while her previous school searched for her replacement.

Students and staff at Vaughan Elementary, a small, rural, Title 1 school in northeastern North Carolina, would have to kick off a new school year without a principal — just one example of how the is playing out on the ground.

When Dr. Keedra Whitaker, chief human resources officer for Warren County Schools, heard the news that the school would have to wait for its new leader, she thought back to when she was a principal.

“Once you’ve been a teacher or an administrator, you never lose that lens,” she said.

The school needed to send information to staff, have initial staff meetings, and even plan the open house.

So she got to work. Alongside Chelsa Jennings, the district’s chief academic officer who has been with the district for 27 years, the two made a schedule and a checklist.

Several other central office staff members eventually joined them, and they took turns in pairs performing day-to-day duties at the school until McMannen could take over. Essentially, Vaughan Elementary had a rotation of leaders who over two months and working in pairs took on the role of principal.

“Students need consistency,” Whitaker said.

“It was key to actually creating that continuity,” Jennings added, “to ensure that we provided the school with some stability and consistency throughout our transitions, along with the parents and the community.”

This extra work certainly wasn’t easy, and this school year already came with its fair share of challenges. Educators are navigating the third year affected by the pandemic, and and country, Warren County Schools is facing a staffing shortage.

The substitute pool has shrunk since the beginning of the pandemic, Whitaker explained, and staff shortages and quarantines have already caused schools to revert to remote learning.

The central office employees haven’t been the only ones taking on multiple jobs — instructional coaches have started teaching, and teachers have given up their planning periods to lead other classrooms.

“When you do have those challenges in any school, the instructional integrity of your school is at risk,” Jennings said. “So you do everything you can to accommodate those areas while our HR department is trying to fill those vacancies.”

And in the meantime, incoming principal McMannen had her feet in two schools at once. While she would come to Vaughan about once a week to start setting up, she spent most of her time at her high school back in her old district.

“So I literally started (at Vaughan) on a Friday,” she said, “and that Tuesday, I gave the ACT (at my old school).”

Despite the obstacles, McMannen was finally greeted on her first full day at Vaughan earlier this month with a Chick-fil-A breakfast and flowers — from her previous school and her husband.

Now that she knows just what kind of team is supporting her in this new district, she’s focused on getting caught up and making sure her students — her “babies” — don’t fall behind.

“Teachers,” she said, “I always say we — and I say we because I’m always gonna be a teacher at heart — you always have to think outside of the box.”

But the shortages are pressing. McMannen said she’s even tried calling universities to see if they can spare any student teachers to fill some vacancies.

“Until teachers can get the support — it’s not even just about money — but the support that they need, you aren’t going to have people that are going to enter the field to teach,” McMannen said. “And I’m praying that it doesn’t, but I feel like it’s going to get worse.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

An interesting set of case examples is surfacing as districts race to handle transportation issues this fall. Fueled by pandemic fears, strained labor markets and vaccine requirements, widespread shortages of bus drivers have left many districts scrambling to find a way to get kids to school as classes started up again. Newspaper headlines have blared stories of unfilled bus driver positions, delays in school start dates, canceled bus routes and hours-long waits for kids.

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Getting students to school is critical: Children can’t learn while waiting for the bus.

How districts react to these unusual labor challenges may be telling us something important: Whether they can adapt to meet the moment and which, if any, will consider adopting innovations that are common in other industries outside of education.

At one end of the scale, a handful of districts have struggled to solve their transportation problems. Districts in Pittsburgh and Rochester, New York, were and . In Anchorage, school is on, but the normal with no substitute in place.

Then there are districts doing more of the usual stuff, for example by offering across-the-board raises and more benefits to attract drivers. In a move late last month, Fairfax County in Virginia . Shelby County in Kentucky will provide part-time workers like bus drivers with .

But, it turns out that a surprising number of districts are pivoting in more significant ways, and doing so with warp speed. We’ve seen impressive shifts to re-envision compensation packages and even rethink working conditions to fill driver positions. A few districts have come up with creative (if temporary) workforce solutions. Perhaps most impressive are those completely rethinking how they provide transportation.

On pay, in the hopes of attracting new drivers and retaining existing employees, numerous districts have introduced a range of hiring and retention incentives with bonuses and enticements previously considered off limits in public education, where uniform pay tied to length of service has been standard practice. In recent weeks, districts like New Haven, Connecticut, have dangled cash through . In Springfield, Missouri, new drivers can receive an extra $4,000 if they stick around for the full school year, while existing employees can , serving as a peer coach to a new driver, maintaining a safe driving record and consistently showing up to work on time.

While these types of incentives have long been routine in the private sector, they are relatively uncommon in public education.

Other districts have changed working conditions and tapped new labor markets. Bozeman, Montana, for instance, is and trying to entice college students by . One New York State congressman is seeking .

In Massachusetts, the governor moved quickly to to provide temporary drivers in districts that could not find sufficient staff.

We think even more promising are the districts redesigning their delivery model altogether, often through the use of an emerging concept called co-production. Co-production is a mechanism where . In this case, parents are given incentives to arrange transportation previously provided by the district’s centralized bus service.

Enticement runs the gamut. The Lansing school district in Michigan began offering city bus passes and worth $25 a month to parents willing to drive their children to school. Some places are offering willing to take on the responsibility of getting their child to class, to the tune of and in .

The idea of paying parents may sound relatively simple and easy, but in practice, districts have had to navigate numerous roadblocks and make quick decisions to get it to work. In talking to district leaders, we’re hearing them sort through thorny decisions about the right payment schedule, who qualifies and whether to make payments contingent on attendance. They’ve had to consider tax implications and set up debit cards or find a vendor to issue the payments. In some cases, they had to work around state laws requiring district-provided transport (in New Jersey, policymakers that its state rules don’t mandate a yellow bus service).

In the larger context, paying parents to participate in getting their kids to school is a new and counterintuitive idea, especially for districts without a track record of seeing parents as formal partners in the education process. While districts have long touted the role of parents, an interesting question is whether this strategy of paying families for transportation could pave the way for similar strategies in other parts of the education puzzle. Would districts consider paying parents to ensure that kids have good attendance, or do their homework, or show up for tutoring? Or will some of these initiatives be viewed as short-term responses born out of necessity, due to the pandemic shortages or as a way to encourage social distancing?

Amid the flurry of activity, of course, some attempts will fail; that’s part of the innovation process. The first solution Chicago announced was a partnership with Uber and Lyft, which was quickly scrapped, as drivers lack sufficient background checks to work with children.

Some of the ideas districts are floating may not sound worthy of “innovation” status, but the changes reflect a serious departure from standard practice. Even one-time incentives for new hires can run up against longstanding labor agreements that prioritize standardization for all employees. Historically, has been to solve problems by adding more staff and to pay them using standard salary schedules. But that approach isn’t working as well these days.

All told, responses to the bus driver shortage make clear that some districts are better than others at pivoting to meet the moment. While COVID-19 has sparked rapid changes in ways never before seen in public education, it shouldn’t take a crisis to spur creative solutions. In many districts, transportation hasn’t worked well for years. Some of the innovations we’ve highlighted here are ; let’s hope that more places learn from these efforts and apply this same sort of creative thinking to other aspects of schooling. At a time when dramatic changes are upending so much of what schools have taken for granted, it may be the case that the districts that can adapt and innovate will be the ones best able to help their students succeed in the months and years ahead.

Chad Aldeman is policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., is director of the Edunomics Lab and a research professor at Georgetown University.