Former Kentucky Commissioner of Education Stephen Pruitt is urging lawmakers to address lagging teacher pay in the Bluegrass State when they return to action in January of 2022.
The Bowling Green Daily News reports:
Spurred by a governor vowing to “fight like heck” for teacher pay raises, Kentucky lawmakers are expected to take up the issue during next year’s legislative session slated to begin Jan. 4.
Meanwhile, new data on the Southern Regional Education Board’s Teacher Compensation Dashboard showed that slow progress in raising teacher pay may worsen existing shortages of high-quality teachers, stunting the region’s economic growth in the long term.
“We’ve got to start recognizing that the teacher shortage is actually a workforce issue,” not just an education issue, said current SREB President and former Kentucky Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt. “We’ve got to think about this more holistically.”
It’s not clear whether the Kentucky General Assembly will actually make a meaningful move to increase teacher compensation.
The warning in Kentucky over a teacher shortage crisis comes as states across the nation are dealing with similar challenges.
In Tennessee, policymakers are also faced with a growing shortage of teachers and school staff.
Now, the crisis that was warned about has arrived. The COVID-19 pandemic likely exacerbated the challenge, to be sure. But, the reality is this is a situation that was entirely foreseeable. Rather than solve the problem, though, policymakers have waited until there are actual impacts to students.
Few are suggesting one key solution: Raise teacher pay substantially. Yes, adjusting responsibilities and providing a more welcoming work environment are also important. But, it is long past time to pay teachers significantly more. Tennessee has a $2 billion surplus from the recently-concluded fiscal year. We could fully close the teacher wage gap (a raise of about 20% for most teachers) and still have plenty of cash left over without raising taxes one dime.
In fact, a parent group in one Tennessee county is sounding the alarm:
URGENT: We’re hearing multiple reports of a massive teacher/staff exodus from WCS.
YOU have the power to fix this. If you can’t be loud for this, don’t complain when your kid’s teacher doesn’t show up on Jan. 5th. What did you do to advocate for them? Starbucks and Target gift cards 1-2 times a year aren’t going to cut it.
Do you know your county commissioners’ names? You should. They approve the budget that pays for your children’s school staff salaries. (PS They also get “free” health insurance for a *very* part-time job, which is rich when our teachers have had their benefits cut short.)
If you’re a WCS parent, you know all about the staffing shortages in our schools this year. Many kids don’t have a science teacher, math, foreign language, special ed, etc. – and they can’t find enough subs to cover every day. Cafeteria workers, bus drivers, SACC workers, the things we’ve all gotten numb to hearing about because we think it’s normal to not have them in place.
It is *not normal* to ask parents to work the school lunch lines serving food.
Of course, there are issues beyond pay that also impact the current challenge in finding and keeping teachers and school staff.
The Daily News report adds:
Another piece of the problem is the lack of support and trust teachers are experiencing, said Megan Boren, SREB’s project manager.
Boren said teachers have told the SREB in various qualitative interviews that they’re perpetually expected to “do more with less” resources from their state’s government.
The pandemic has only fueled burnout, Boren said.
“That is just exacerbating our shortage problem,” Boren said.
And, as Peter Greene recently noted, a failed experiment in test-based teacher “accountability” has also contributed to teachers fleeing the field.