Vermont has 10% fewer educators than it did before the pandemic. That’s the worst mark in the country, save Alaska, according to a recent U.S. Department of Education report. The decline is prompting some Vermont principals to hire teachers with fewer qualifications — and is in some cases forcing schools to send kids home for the day.
John Castle is the executive director of the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, and until recently, he was a superintendent in the North Country Supervisory Union. He acknowledged feeling conflicted about some of the hiring decisions he’s had to make as shortages have become more acute.
“When you're trying to fill a position, and you don't have viable candidates, sometimes you hire individuals that may not really be ready. And you're taking a shot, right? Because that's who you've got,” he said. “And so that's the quandary is where, you know, I want to say ‘thank you’ to a whole host of folks that have stepped up and said, you know, I'll do my best to be a teacher. But in some cases that hasn't worked out.”
The number of people graduating from teacher prep programs in Vermont has dramatically declined over the last 20 years. And people who complete those programs are also increasingly not heading into the classroom.
Meanwhile, the Vermont Agency of Education has doubled the number of provisional and emergency licenses — which are granted when districts can’t find a licensed candidate — that it has issued in recent years.
It’s Penny Chamberlin's third year as superintendent in the seven-town Orleans Central Supervisory Union. And in her short tenure, the district has already onboarded more than 200 new employees — out of a total staff of about 320.
Chamberlin said the supervisory union nearly didn’t have enough staff to open all its K-8 schools this year. And there are days when some schools have to send kids in certain grades home for the day, because there’s no teacher, administrator or substitute available. Chamberlin said she’s struggling to communicate to her families, who are understandably upset, why this is so regularly happening.
“There's sometimes that thought that, 'Well, we don't care, we just leave the kids at home, because we don't want to teach them or anything of that nature,'” she said. “When in fact, that actually is — I think from my principals’ standpoint — the biggest heartbreak for them.”
What’s happening in Orleans Central is an outlier for now. But while extreme, it’s also indicative of a larger trend. According to data from the Agency of Education, the schools with some of the highest proportions of teachers on emergency and provisional licenses are in rural elementary schools. And because they’re small, they’re also more likely to experience a major disruption if someone is out sick or quits.
There are a lot of reasons why recruiting and retaining educators is difficult right now. One is pay and benefits — on a per-pupil basis, Vermont is one of the top spenders on education in the country. But when it comes to teacher pay, the state falls to the middle of the pack. Two states that border Vermont — New York and Massachusetts — also pay much better.
Another factor is housing, which is particularly hard to find in rural areas. Many teachers are also parents themselves, and the scarcity and cost of childcare is also a growing concern. That’s especially the case for teachers in elementary schools, who are paid less than teachers in high school, and more likely to decide that working while paying for childcare doesn’t make financial sense.
The problem, many educators say, is also starting to compound on itself. Newer teachers need mentorship and support from more experienced educators. But if a building has too many newer teachers — and too few experienced teachers — then those newer teachers are more likely to feel unsupported and give up, and those experienced teachers are more likely to burn out. Vacancies that aren’t filled at all, meanwhile, add even further to the stress.
“This is this cascading cyclical thing that we're in. And like I said, it's a norm we've developed, but it's not safe. It's not practical, and it's not sustainable,” Chamberlin said.
The Vermont-National Education Association surveyed over 2,000 school employees about their working conditions last year. According to a summary of results compiled by the union, most educators — except for paraeducators — cited staffing shortages in their buildings as an even bigger problem than pay.
Educators also identified insufficient support for managing student conduct as a major concern.
The shortage, however, has paved the way for a suite of new incentives and mentorship programs. The Legislature has funded loan reimbursement programs and waived licensing fees. The Vermont-NEA has created a program, called Grow VT-ED, to support educators on temporary licenses to put together peer-reviewed portfolios to get fully licensed. And the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative has started an apprenticeship program.
Stephanie Shoff was working as a paraeducator at Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington and planning to leave Vermont and transition into a teaching career. That’s when a colleague told her about all the incentive programs available.
“So I decided to stay,” said Shoff, who is now teaching math at Mount Anthony while working toward her full licensure with the union’s help. “It's been amazing. The support is absolutely phenomenal.”
When Shoff is done with her portfolio, she’ll have a license with endorsements in special education and math — two of the state’s most acute shortage areas in education. She plans to continue working as a math teacher in a general education classroom, but she thinks her double licensure will make her uniquely qualified to help those students who struggle the most.
“I really enjoy working with that population and trying to create a drive in them to finish and do what they need to do,” she said. “That's fulfilling to me.”
The people who are working on creating new pathways into the teaching profession think they can put a real dent in the problem. But they’re also excited that this could help diversify a workforce that has long been overwhelmingly white, female and middle class.
Castle, the former North Country superintendent, remembered how, even in the high-poverty schools he oversaw, many educators came from “middle class or upper upper middle class backgrounds.” He thinks building new, more affordable pathways into the profession that support non-traditional candidates will bring more individuals into teaching that came from more “modest economic means.”
“That's important, because then they have an affinity for the students that they're working with,” he said. “And I think students see themselves in those teachers.”
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