Discussing Educator Shortages

By Eileen O’grady
THE CONCORD MONITOR
Discussions about teacher staffing shortages and retention solutions began for New Hampshire state legislators this week, as a new study committee is making plans to examine everything from workplace climate to salary disparities to enrollment in teacher prep programs.

The new Committee to Study New Hampshire Teacher Shortages and Recruitment Incentives met for the first time Wednesday and came up with a broad list of topics they want to review.

“Our challenge here is to kind of lay out what are the areas that we can look at, and begin to gather some of the data,” said Rep. Mel Myler, one of the committee’s six members.

The study committee was created through a bill that was signed by the governor in June, for the purpose of studying the problem of teacher staffing shortages in New Hampshire since 2018 and identifying potential retention and recruitment solutions.

In recent years, New Hampshire school district administrators say they have been hard-pressed to find candidates to fill positions generated by routine turnover. School districts are increasingly starting the school year with vacant positions, particularly for support staff such as paraeducators, and the number of students graduating from New Hampshire’s teacher prep programs is declining. While nearly every district has noticed the issue to a certain degree, it’s the smaller, more rural and more low-income school districts that seem to be hit the hardest.

One of the committee’s first tasks, according to Chairman Sen. Jay Kahn, will be to gather data that can help determine how much of a teacher shortage exists in New Hampshire, and which school districts are experiencing it the most. The best data in the state so far is the Department of Education’s Critical Shortage List, which is compiled through a survey of superintendents which asks them how many positions in their districts are vacant, and whether they are considered difficult to fill, and why.

But committee member Steve Appleby from New Hampshire’s Division of Educator Support and Higher Education says the critical shortage data is less than ideal because it lacks the context of each district’s total number of positions. For example, under the current system, a district may report four special education teacher vacancies at their elementary school, but if the state doesn’t know how many special education positions the school has in total, it’s hard to assess the extent of the shortage.

Appleby said his department will be sending out a new, revamped survey this fall with additional questions about how many positions are in each district and how many staff members there are on different types of licenses, which he said should result in better data that will be available by the end of October.

The scope of the committee’s study is broad, as members say they are interested in examining not only K-12 education, but also early childhood education and teacher prep programs at colleges and universities. The Committee plans to look at recruitment incentives that other states are using such as loan forgiveness, housing assistance, tuition reimbursements and scholarships, to see if they could be implemented in New Hampshire.

The committee has also decided to expand its definition of “teacher” and look at shortages among other school instructional personnel, including paraeducators. Nearly every school district is experiencing shortages and difficulty hiring support staff, who are some of the lowest-paid employees in school districts.

Myler, a Hopkinton Democrat, said he wants to hear from teachers who have recently left the field to learn more about the environment teachers are experiencing within schools.

“The question is, what is happening out there to make a teacher say ‘I’ve had enough’?” Myler said. “They’re under a lot of stress. There are still residual impacts of COVID in those schools and I think that if we don’t look at some of the environmental stuff, we’re missing a major piece here.”

Rep. Oliver Ford, a Chester Republican, suggested examining the way teachers are being portrayed in the current political climate, and how it’s impacting people’s decisions to enter or remain in the field.

“People are being criticized for being teachers, and that doesn’t do anything in the market to make other people want to step in and join the teaching force,” Ford said. “I think we need to engage in the prospect of talking about the essential needs of teachers in our culture, and the requirements that they are the ones who prepare the people who achieve the economic development that everybody gives automatic lip service to.”

The committee also hopes to identify strategies for attracting more qualified candidates into the profession to fill shortage areas, particularly in rural districts and districts with lower performance outcomes. They also want to focus on improving the racial and ethnic diversity of teachers in the state, to better reflect the diversity of New Hampshire’s student body.

In the coming months, members say they want to talk with representatives from the New Hampshire Retirement System and from New Hampshire colleges and universities about their teacher prep programs, and ways they can channel graduates into public schools where they’re needed. Members cited the Monitor’s series “Schools Under Stress” as a reference point for many of the issues they want to explore.

“It’s critical that we do look at not just K-12 teaching, but we look at the whole nine yards here and make sure that our pipeline is going to be strong,” said Rep Rick Ladd, a Haverhill Republican.

The committee will disband in November 2023, when it will report its findings to the governor, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate. Its next meeting will be held on Sept. 21.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.