A top Pennsylvania education official said Tuesday the supply of new teachers has reached a “breaking point” because of plummeting numbers of young adults going into the field and the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tanya Garcia, a deputy secretary at the Department of Education, told lawmakers there has been a 66% drop in newly issued in-state teaching certificates over an 11-year stretch. The number of undergraduate education majors in Pennsylvania dropped by the same amount — 66% — over the last decade, Garcia said.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Garcia testified during a House Education Committee hearing.
Testifiers said the shortage predated the COVID-19 pandemic.
Factors making it worse, they said, include relatively low pay, high college debt loads, a decline in the public image of teachers, and a lack of minority teachers who could inspire next-generation teachers from those communities.
But some said the pandemic exacerbated the shortage.
Mary Jo Walsh, principal of Fell Charter School in Lackawanna County, said 80% of staff left during the pandemic.
“We are currently in survival mode and the mode below that is failure,” Walsh said.
Vicki Truchan, an eighth grade English teacher in Allegheny County’s North Hills School District, said its first-year teachers are paid only $35,000 a year and teachers in general have been disrespected in recent years.
“We are really facing a full-blown crisis,” Truchan said.
New approaches needed
Garcia said the state needs to dramatically change the way it attracts, prepares and retains educators. Among other things, she focused on a lack of minority teachers.
“Without a significant increase in the diversity of our educator workforce, large percentages of students will go through most or all of their educational careers without seeing teachers, principals and other school leaders who look like them,” Garcia said.
Desha Williams, dean of the College of Education and Social Work at West Chester University, said 4% of Pennsylvania teachers come from a non-white background, while more than 33% of students are people of color.
That, she said, is one of the largest such disparities in the nation. Another negative for the profession, she said, is that the role of a teacher is no longer “revered” in society.
Among ideas to increase numbers, Garcia mentioned sign-up bonuses, development of mentoring programs and “grow your own” teacher programs in communities.
The need for substitute teachers has greatly increased and the competition for substitutes has become fierce, Unionville-Chadds Ford Superintendent John Sanville said.
The lack of substitutes adds to the stress on teachers because all classrooms need a teacher or a substitute, so when there are not enough subs, teachers have to fill in those gaps.
“We have increased pay for substitute teachers to compete. And it becomes a dog chasing its tail, because we raise our rates; neighboring districts, neighboring counties, raise their rates; and it is all just in an effort to recruit from an ever-diminishing substitute pool,” Sanville said.
The average pay for a substitute in Chester County is $130 a day, without benefits, he said.
Education personnel shortages run beyond teaching, he said.
“It is across all job categories,” Sanville testified. “You are seeing administrators across the commonwealth serving lunches, driving buses. I have done both myself this year. It is a situation that is not sustainable.”
He added, “Any way to open the door, to allow us to get more people in the door, will really benefit all the students.”
Morning Call Capitol correspondent Ford Turner can be reached at fturner@mcall.com.
