Sacramento-area schools opened with hundreds of vacancies. Where did the teachers go?

Kids are back in class all over Sacramento County, but some schools are still struggling to fill open jobs for teachers, administrators and more.

Weeks into the school year, about 250 teachers were needed across the 13 public school districts in Sacramento County, according to the Sacramento County Office of Education. The challenge is especially acute in Sacramento City Unified, which had about 100 teacher vacancies in the last week of August just before school started.

Another 500 to 700 classified employees, meanwhile, are needed across the county. Districts like San Juan Unified, Folsom Cordova Unified, and Elk Grove are still filling those positions.

The local school staffing shortage reflects a nationwide problem the White House highlighted last week when it rolled out a plan to step up recruiting and to nudge school districts to raise pay for educators. More than 300,000 teaching jobs are open across the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s tempting to blame COVID-19 for the vacancies. Many educators know colleagues who left their careers citing exhaustion from teaching during the pandemic, a period characterized by remote-learning, mask mandates and intense school board politics.

“We have asked teachers to do an unbelievable number of things: to create their curriculum, to be nurturers of mental health, to be communicators to parents and the community,” said David Steiner, Executive Director of Johns Hopkins’ Institute of Education Policy. “It’s no wonder that it’s too much for many.”

But education experts and administrators said the cause of today’s staffing shortages predate the pandemic. For years, California credential programs have been under-enrolled. Teacher wages haven’t kept up with the state’s sky-high cost of living, especially for educators at the start of their careers.

Rebecca LeDoux, a teacher from Twin Rivers Unified and President of Twin Rivers United Educators said districts have failed to recruit and retain educators.

“Students don’t have a permanent teacher in their classroom and too many are shuffled around well into the school year,” LeDoux said. “Failing to invest ample available funding where it counts, to students and staff retention, means teachers are pushed out of the profession they love and students suffer. We can and must do better.”

Schools across the country have an average three teacher vacancies and three unfilled non-teaching position, according to the National Center for Education. Many more teachers may leave the profession; about half of the nation’s teachers are considering it, according to the National Education Association.

Schools are struggling to hire special education and bilingual teachers in particular, according to Christopher Morphew, dean at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Students from underserved communities are more likely to have inexperienced teachers.

Mary Osteen is one of many teachers who left her the classroom earlier than she planned. Osteen, 65, retired from teaching at Luther Burbank High School.

Teaching was her calling. She loved her eager and dedicated English language learners – some of whom fled from Mexico and South America cartels and others who lost family members in Afghanistan.

But she began to feel unsafe in the pandemic.

“You get worn out, and I got tired of living in fear,” she said, adding that she wanted Sacramento City Unified to do more to protect teachers. “If I grieve, I would grieve that particular part of my career,” she said.

Where did teachers go?

More than 12,000 teachers retired in 2019, according to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. The number dropped to 11,700 in 2020 and rose again to 12,700 teachers in 2021.

That’s an increase in retirements, but not enough to explain the entire trend.

Instead, union leaders say more teachers simply found other jobs.

“The pandemic has accelerated both retirements and resignations throughout the state,” said Lisa Gardiner, a spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association.

Samantha Gagne worked in special education for nearly a decade, including three years at Elk Grove Unified. She said she felt too exhausted to continue working in a classroom. Like many Americans, she now has a work-from-home job. Hers offered her the same pay.

“Elk Grove has such great specializations of programs, but that comes with more students,” she said. “Most of my special education cases previously maxed out at 12 students, but my highest was 18.”

She said she’d like to see more attention on teacher vacancies lead to changes that improve working conditions for educators.

“It is a very convoluted process and sometimes broken process,” she said. “I am looking forward to the conversations changing now that there is this shortage.”

Vacancies in special education are a particular strain on school districts.

Amanda Morgan teaches special education at a Carmichael school with two vacancies. She said school districts were often short of special education teachers well before COVID-19.

While teaching positions are often filled by people with existing credentials or staff who fill in during their prep periods, Morgan worries that if special education positions don’t get filled, schools will turn to teachers who do not have appropriate training to serve some of the most vulnerable students.

“These students have a variety of needs,” said Morgan, who works at Ralph Richardson Center. “They need support just to keep themselves safe.”

Sacramento parents worry about school year

Jenny Wu’s daughter signed up for Spanish 1 at Folsom High School, but a school counselor told her daughter she would have to wait until next year.

Concerned about waiting another year to start taking language classes and staying competitive for college applications, Wu enrolled her daughter in a Chinese course at Folsom Lake College.

“I really wanted her to get Spanish this year when academics are not that heavy,” Wu said.

Folsom Cordova Unified officials said a new Spanish teacher was just hired for Folsom High School.

Wu is worried it’s too late.

Last year, about 3,000 Sacramento City Unified students — predominantly at schools that serve low-income students — didn’t have a teacher each day. Earlier this year, the district and the Sacramento City Teachers Association came to an agreement to offer a more generous compensation package to help recruit and retain teachers for the upcoming school year.

Sacramento City Unified also created two new positions to focus solely on recruitment and retention, according to officials.

But on the first day of classes in Sacramento City Unified, district parent Kerry Madden said her 10th grader didn’t have a math teacher, physics teacher or P.E. teacher.

Madden said the vacancies leave her terrified. She plans to seek after-school programs to keep her child up to speed, and wants to ensure that her child will have all the right classes to apply to a four-year university.

“My kid wants to go into neuropsychology and has had math anxiety their whole life,” she said. “I won’t allow district incompetence to prevent my child from pursuing their dreams.

What are California schools doing about the shortage?

California pumped $3.6 billion in investments over the last four years to improve teacher recruitment, retention and training. At least some of the money is going directly to teachers.

Folsom Cordova Unified and its teachers union worked together to provide incentives for teachers to join the district. It offered a $2,500 bonus and 8% salary increase for all teachers, and an additional 3% increase for special education teachers. The agreement between the district and the teachers union will cost the district more than $15 million.

The deal Sacramento City Unified struck last year to end an eight-day teacher strike included a 4% raise and a package of bonuses that would add thousands of dollars in pay for teachers.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the State Department of Education are providing grants to teacher residency programs, credential fee waivers and incentives for teachers to work at high priority, understaffed schools.

Down the road, Sacramento County Superintendent Gordon said schools must do everything they can to create a pipeline to recruit new teachers and retain the ones working today.

“It’s a five- to seven-year process to develop a teacher,” he said. “If you can plan how to profile the support during that process, young people will respond.”

The Sacramento County Office of Education has a fast-track intern program that serves about 100 teachers each year. Five months into the program, participants are eligible for a temporary credential and a paid job, where they work for two years while obtaining their credential.

“Our young people have a very strong interest in public service,” Gordon said. “But if we don’t create opportunities, we will have persistent shortages.”

Gordon also said salaries must be addressed. The average teacher salary in 2020-21 in Sacramento County was $80,324, according to the state Department of Education, nearly $15,000 above the national average.

But the financial incentives for teaching depend largely on years of service. Pensions and step-increases pay off for teachers who spend decades in the classroom. Starting salaries for teachers in Sacramento County come in around $50,000 a year.

That can deter people from starting a career in education, especially because teachers can accumulate tens of thousands of dollars or more student loans obtaining degrees and credentials.

“It is unfortunate that we ask anyone to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to become a teacher and then pay them $40,000 a year when they arrive, sitting on mountains of debt,” said Steiner of Johns Hopkins’ Institute of Education Policy.

Former teachers look back

Osteen, the recently retired Sacramento City Unified teacher, worries about her students now that she isn’t on campus with them. What kind of support are they receiving from their new teachers? Are they good?

“How many people can take a deep breath and just teach?” she said. “That’s just something that comes with experience. You can’t just take anybody and have them thrive as an educator in that environment. If I dwell on it, it makes me very sad because maybe there won’t be the same commitment.”

Gagne, the former Elk Grove special education teacher, said she can’t allow herself to feel guilty for leaving the profession.

“I miss it, but teachers can’t be held responsible for the systemic failures of administration,” she said.

Gagne said she will consider returning to teaching after her young children grow older. But she is constantly reminded of the burn-out.

“One of my friends had a mental breakdown,” she said. “And it’s only the second week of school.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.