Brian Hagberg
RUSSELL, Pa. – Now that a decision has been made regarding where students will take classes in the fall, the Warren County School District must find enough teachers to provide instruction for its students.
The teacher shortage across the commonwealth, and the nation, has reached “crisis” levels. And its impacts are being sharply felt in the Warren County School District. During committee meetings on June 26, WCSD Superintendent Amy Stewart illustrated just how dire the situation is.
“We had 15 professional positions with a total of 10 total outside applicants for all 15 positions,” Stewart said.
While some of those positions may be filled internally, there were a number that received no external applications.
“We have two Spanish positions with no applicants,” Stewart said. “A biology position with no applicants. We didn’t get an applicant for the medical position. We have two Tech. Ed. positions with one applicant. Two Health and PE positions, two applicants. And again, we don’t even know if they’re viable applicants at this point. They’re just applicants.”
Nearly 60 teachers with emergency certifications were teaching classes across the district during the 2022-23 school year.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Stewart said in an interview with Your Daily Local. “It would be typical for us to have maybe half a dozen. Or maybe in an area where all of a sudden we need an extra section . . . and the teacher’s busy, you might certify (another) teacher to teach that course or something like that. But this is extraordinary.”
While the pandemic played a role in the sudden spike in emergency certifications, the actual teacher shortage began long before the COVID closures.
According to a report from Penn State University, the number of teaching positions filled by those on an emergency certification throughout the commonwealth in the 2011-12 school year was 896. By the 2020-21 school year, that number had ballooned to 5,958. The most recent data available from the Pennsylvania Department of Education put the number at 6,386 for the 2021-22 school year.
Perhaps the most concerning statement from the PSU report was the data that showed, “For the first time in the history of the Commonwealth, the number of newly certified teachers was less than the number of teaching positions filled by teachers on emergency permits.”
“This teacher shortage is for real,” WCSD School Board President Paul Mangione said during the Public Engagement Session on June 19. “And if we had enough teachers, we wouldn’t be here doing this (high school reconfiguration), things could stay the same. But we do not have enough teachers. We don’t have enough certified teachers. So something needs to happen.”
The shortage isn’t limited to a specific subject or grade level. According to the PSU report, Elementary, ELL, Computer Science, Foreign Languages, and Special Education have seen the most significant increases in the number of emergency certifications.
“The US Department of Ed has Elementary on their high needs list, which is unheard of,” Stewart said. “I can remember looking at stacks of elementary applications, it was unbelievable. And now, I mean, we have emergency certified Elementary teachers.”
There was a time when the district had to sift through applications and determine which applicants to bring in for a formal interview.
“We used to have rubrics and if things weren’t right (on an application) we’d put them (to the side) and probably wouldn’t be interviewing them,” WCSD Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Eric Mineweaser said in an interview with Your Daily Local.
He added that applicants who are certified are almost assured of at least interviewing for the position now based on need.
At the time of the interview, Mineweaser was trying to sort through a potential issue with Spanish instructors.
“We’re down one Spanish teacher with it with the way we’re set up right now,” Mineweaser said. “We have one person that’s emergency certified right now teaching Spanish. Next year, there’s potential that we could be down, up to three. So that would leave us with two for the whole district. Now I’m running into the situation where we have to start making decisions on what do we run.
“We have introductory to Spanish in eighth grade right now. It’s an elective class for our eighth graders, and it kind of gets them set for Spanish I. If we’re in the same situation as what I’m predicting could happen, I don’t think I can run that because I need those Spanish teachers for high school. We have to make program decisions, big program decisions, based off of certifications.”
During WCSD Committee meetings on April 24, board member Mary Passinger pointed out how the loss of teachers has affected course offerings in the district.
“At one point we offered in Warren County, you could have German, French, Spanish, Latin, and I’m pretty sure at least one school offered Russian for a while,” Passinger said. “And we are now down to Spanish. That’s it.”
The lack of certified teachers has also created an additional burden on those teachers who remain in the district. Teachers in smaller schools in the district are often left with multiple preps, sometimes double or triple the number of preps their counterparts in other schools have.
“A teacher prep is a course in which they teach that they have to prepare for,” Mineweaser said. “So when someone says we have a seven-period day, and you get one period, a planning period. So that’s like your, your 50 Minute, 40-minute block of time that is duty-free, right? So that’s your planning period, 40 to 50 minutes. And then the preps are how many different courses that you’re teaching throughout the day.”
During the interview with Your Daily Local, Mineweaser compared math teachers in two different schools. Teacher A had two preps, while Teacher B had six preps. That means while both teachers were teaching during six of the seven periods, Teacher A was teaching just two courses (e.g. Algebra I and Algebra II) while Teacher B was teaching six courses (e.g. Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, and Trigonometry).
“So (Teacher B)’’s teaching six completely different things, prepping for six lessons, where (Teacher A) is prepping for just two,” Stewart said.
That discrepancy will lead to current staff bidding for open positions within the district to reduce their workload.
“That math will come up and that person that has six preps will be like, ‘Wow, I can go there and only have two or three preps?’ And that’s happened,” Mineweaser said.
Stewart said the district is taking steps to be even more proactive in its approach to recruiting new certified teachers.
“Gary (Weber, the WCSD Director of Administrative Suppor Services) is reaching out to (college and university) admissions and various educational departments, and explaining some of the positions that we’d have open,” Stewart said. “We’re going to try to start inviting student teachers to our professional development, just like come on in and not charge them anything, but come in and experience what we do on professional development days.”
The issue is exacerbated by the steep decline in the number of students earning teacher certifications across the state. According to the PSU report, “from 2010-11 to 2020-21, the number of initial instate certificates awarded declined by 67%.”
According to that data, there were 15,031 initial instate certificates awarded in 2010-11 while there were just 5,440 awarded in 2020-21.
The 2023 Merrimack College Teacher Survey showed more than half of current teachers would not advise their younger selves to enter the profession, and 35% indicated they were considering leaving the profession altogether.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed HB 141 on May 1, the “Grow Our Own Educators” bill designed to encourage paraprofessionals and other school support staff to obtain teaching certificates. The bill is still awaiting state senate approval.
