Speaker 1: It's Monday, December one. I'm oscar A Mirrors from the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is a
Speaker 1: reopening America. The disruption that the pandemic has caused to
Speaker 1: the education system has ranged from kids having to transition
Speaker 1: to remote learning, parents experiencing burnout trying to help their
Speaker 1: kids learn and balance work life, but it has also
Speaker 1: caused a teacher shortage. Early retirements and quarantines are forcing
Speaker 1: some school administrators to recruit parents as substitute teachers, increase
Speaker 1: class sizes, and even use bus drivers to babysit classrooms.
Speaker 1: Arizona in particular has been hit hard by a shortage
Speaker 1: of teachers, and many say that educational achievement has suffered
Speaker 1: because of it. Valerie Boreline, national reporter at The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Valorie,
Speaker 1: glad to be here. We've been checking in periodically, obviously
Speaker 1: with our teachers as the pandemic continues to go on.
Speaker 1: We know how big of a disruptor the pandemic has
Speaker 1: already been to the school system. Students learning in class,
Speaker 1: students learning at home remotely. It's been quite a mass
Speaker 1: stopping classes because of rising cases. It's all over the place.
Speaker 1: But we're also seeing that there's a big teacher shortage
Speaker 1: out there, and school districts are having to get really creative,
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, in how to fill some
Speaker 1: of those seats, recruiting parents, bus drivers, the babysit classrooms.
Speaker 1: There's really this all hands on deck type of mode
Speaker 1: for a lot of school systems out there right now. So, Valerie,
Speaker 1: you wrote a pretty comprehensive article about what's going on.
Speaker 1: Tell us what we're seeing with this teacher shortage. You
Speaker 1: really can't overstate the disruption that's happening in Khel and
Speaker 1: all education in this country, particularly in the public schools.
Speaker 1: You know, it was one thing in the spring to
Speaker 1: have the brush of adrenaline, and we're gonna make virtual
Speaker 1: learning work and get through the spring. And now if
Speaker 1: the pandemic drags on into its ninth month, you're seeing
Speaker 1: parents frustrated, kids not learning as much as they should
Speaker 1: have by now, and teachers really starting to burnout. And
Speaker 1: all the disruption that you're talking about is adding up
Speaker 1: to a real um difficult working environment for teachers, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing people leave the profession. You're also seeing commonly
Speaker 1: in many school districts that they're not enough teachers in
Speaker 1: the building to whole class, whether because they're quarantining or
Speaker 1: what have you. So it really the staffing crunch in
Speaker 1: American schools is something you can't underestimate. Back to the teachers,
Speaker 1: you know, the staffing crunch. Really the teachers that stay behind,
Speaker 1: then those are the ones that get really fatigued by
Speaker 1: the whole thing. They're the ones that get the burnout
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. And a lot of the teachers
Speaker 1: and administrators I spoke with say exactly that, like, it's tough. Now,
Speaker 1: it's tough for teachers to have to sub out for
Speaker 1: another teacher during their planning time, for example, But what's
Speaker 1: really tough is the burnout factor and whether that teachers
Speaker 1: will stay in the field or potentially retire early. And
Speaker 1: also one thing to think about is whether what's happening
Speaker 1: in the school system entices young people to go into teaching.
Speaker 1: They see what's happening firsthand, and will they decide to
Speaker 1: go that route seeing how tough it is for their
Speaker 1: own teachers that they admire and in some cases really
Speaker 1: see being overwhelmed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Speaker 1: Public school employment in November was down eight point from February.
Speaker 1: This is the lowest level since two thousand and you
Speaker 1: guys have a nice little graph of showing the progression
Speaker 1: of employment, and you just see that sharp drop earlier
Speaker 1: this year and throughout the pandemic. Arizona has shown a
Speaker 1: real stark contrast in all of this, heavily impacted by this.
Speaker 1: I thought that the statistics from the Bureau of Labor
Speaker 1: Statistics was really eye opening. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: schools have on this fewer people in the building, but
Speaker 1: the building is the same size, their responsibilities are the same,
Speaker 1: if not more, And because of physical social distance, teachers
Speaker 1: can have you with kids in the classroom, so in
Speaker 1: some ways they're stretched dinner. So what really struck me
Speaker 1: visiting some schools was how being having fewer people in
Speaker 1: the building taxes the others that are there. And to
Speaker 1: your point about Arizona, yes, I think this is happening
Speaker 1: in pockets all across the country. In Arizona certainly is
Speaker 1: one educators I've talked to, including this head of superintendent,
Speaker 1: just said, yeah, it's a crisis for us. Let's get
Speaker 1: a little deeper in their Arizona, they weren't able to
Speaker 1: hire traditionally certified teachers for seventy eight percent of some
Speaker 1: open positions that they had, so they had to get creative.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were filled by emergency substitutes. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you get people from other counties. Student teachers were
Speaker 1: a big source of plugging that hole there. And then
Speaker 1: beyond that, they're urging parents people with you know, they
Speaker 1: reduced some of the requirements, so they're people with high
Speaker 1: school diplomas can take an online course and then be
Speaker 1: certified for emergency substitutes. So they're getting very creative with
Speaker 1: how to feel a lot of these positions, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, they're required to have, you know, not
Speaker 1: just legally, but you know, morally. They're educators and want
Speaker 1: to educate. They need to have teacher in the rooms
Speaker 1: virtually or physically, so, but they're having to get really
Speaker 1: creative to make that happen. So the relaxing around standards
Speaker 1: is a theme you hear all over the country. Iowa
Speaker 1: and Missouri, for example, lowered the requirements to be an
Speaker 1: emergency substitute. In Atlanta, you could be twenty years old.
Speaker 1: And we talked to some kids that were twenty years
Speaker 1: old and not teachers, but physically in the in the classroom.
Speaker 1: So I think it's one of those things Arizona has
Speaker 1: had is an example of a state that's had a
Speaker 1: teacher shortage building for a number of years. You know,
Speaker 1: as you might remember the Red Fred Protest of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eighteen really started in Phoenix and kind of
Speaker 1: blossomed out in other places around the country. So the
Speaker 1: teacher shortage, comparatively low teacher pay there, the really high
Speaker 1: ratio of students to teachers. There's like twenty three and
Speaker 1: a half students per teacher in Arizona compared to sixteen
Speaker 1: kids for teacher nationally. So there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure points they're building up. And then the combination of that,
Speaker 1: that wave of teacher shortage building crashing up against the
Speaker 1: wave of the pandemic. It's really created a tough situation
Speaker 1: in many many Arizona school You have a lot of
Speaker 1: examples in the article. They're all very good, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to focus a little bit, if you can, on
Speaker 1: Principal Christine Hollandsworth. This is in Phoenix and they're having
Speaker 1: severe staff shortages there. She was up until you know,
Speaker 1: early in the morning, trying to find a substitute teacher.
Speaker 1: In many cases, she's begin to help teach classes. Other
Speaker 1: teachers are combining classes. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: how they're approaching this. One of the things that was
Speaker 1: really amazing being around Principal Holly's Worth was just how
Speaker 1: she was one of the ones who kept saying, it's
Speaker 1: all hands on deck. We're figuring it out as we
Speaker 1: go because we have to. But I should know that
Speaker 1: just how cheerful, how positive she was, and how much
Speaker 1: she loved seeing even the small cohort of students that
Speaker 1: was able to be in the building. She was so
Speaker 1: happy to see them and put through their masks and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I can see I could see her smile under there,
Speaker 1: So you know, I would say that teachers are really
Speaker 1: in administrators are trying to make the best of of
Speaker 1: a really tough situation. But the day that I spent
Speaker 1: some time with her, she was having a hard time
Speaker 1: finding a substitute. There's nationwide pressure on substitute teachers and
Speaker 1: they're just not enough of them, and she couldn't find
Speaker 1: a substitute for her our teacher, even though she'd been trying.
Speaker 1: She was up at four that morning trying to find
Speaker 1: someone figure out how she was going to handle it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, gods, you were up at
Speaker 1: four and it's it's eight schools starting and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm up at four every day this year. And I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the reality is that that we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. It's just as this stretches on
Speaker 1: kind of where we had it. The new normal for
Speaker 1: schools is constant change every day. It has been for
Speaker 1: nine months. Yeah, I mean it's tough. Miss Hollingsworth went
Speaker 1: on to this elementary school database to see if she
Speaker 1: can fill a bunch of these open seats, and I
Speaker 1: guess they only got five applicants for dozens of teaching jobs.
Speaker 1: This is across thirty two different elementary school so, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just really kind of illustrates how short this thing is.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about other creative options. Enough, sometimes a
Speaker 1: teacher will come on and say, man, this is just
Speaker 1: not for me anymore, and then they quit within the
Speaker 1: first couple of weeks or so. And that was kind
Speaker 1: of another recurring theme that a lot of people were experiencing.
Speaker 1: So it's just a tough time overall, and obviously we
Speaker 1: need more funding for these programs for the teachers. It's
Speaker 1: just tough all around, really well academic, it's a difficult
Speaker 1: situation for online learning and hybrid learning all around. Like
Speaker 1: you said, I will point out that the pressure in
Speaker 1: schools is more intense in some places than others. Right
Speaker 1: So in rural areas, for example, it's really hard right
Speaker 1: now to get teachers to build jobs. But in cit
Speaker 1: these where there's good quality of living and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, support for teachers in schools, you might
Speaker 1: have far more applicants for jobs. So it's uneven, but
Speaker 1: I think there's definitely pressure on the teacher's supply in many,
Speaker 1: many places nationwide. Valerie Borderline, national reporter at the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. I'm oscar A Mirrors
Speaker 1: and this has been opening America. Don't forget the effort
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