No Teachers, No Leaders, What's Next?
Shortages of Teachers, Staff, and District Leaders Put American Public Education in Peril
There have been plenty of stories lately about teacher shortages and shortages of school staff. Now, we’re seeing stories about how no one wants to lead school districts.
The Hechinger Report details the sudden rise in vacancies among school superintendents - noting that the turnover rate was 25% last year. That’s a 10-point increase over a typical year.
The job of a superintendent — managing multimillion-dollar budgets, supervising school principals and central staff, fielding matters of public concern and negotiating school board priorities — has never been easy. And now, as thousands of school boards across the country compete to hire new district leaders, it’s not entirely clear who actually wants and will be qualified to do these jobs.
Altogether, the ongoing impact of Covid-19, coupled with political turmoil at the local level, has likely added as many as 3,000 vacancies beyond normal attrition during the last and current school years in the approximately 13,500 public school districts in the U.S., Collins said.
The article notes that heated school board meetings combined with the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic have made the job increasingly unpleasant.
Staffing Shortages Lead to Virtual School in Minnesota
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune notes that the Minneapolis Public Schools will be going virtual through January 28th as a result of staffing shortages ostensibly related to the pandemic.
Minneapolis Public Schools will go virtual for two weeks due to a "significant reduction" in school staff available to work because of COVID-19, district officials said Wednesday afternoon.
Students will begin learning virtually on Friday and return to classrooms Jan. 31.
The announcement came a day after officials in the Osseo, Prior Lake and Richfield districts said they would move toward remote learning. Rochester and Shakopee schools announced on Wednesday a move to distance learning from Jan. 18-28.
The Fight for Funding in Tennessee
The Tennessee General Assembly is back in session and public education advocates are calling on Gov. Lee and legislators to boost funding for schools as the state considers reform of its school funding formula - the BEP.
The President of the Metro Nashville Education Association says it is time for Tennessee to decide whether or not it is serious about public education:
NewsChannel5 reports on school funding and comments made by MNEA President Michelle Sheriff:
Metropolitan Nashville Education Association reports Tennessee is 46th in the nation when it comes to funding schools.
The organization’s president Michele Sheriff said for students to be successful the funding needs to be adequate.
“The state needs to decide. You can’t underfund schools and then say schools are failing students. You have to provide the funding for what students need to see the success moving forward,” Sheriff explained.