Minnesota schools have been facing a significant teacher/workforce shortage the last few years, but it appears as though the situation has amplified.
“It’s a crisis and I’m not understating that by any means,” Murray County Central Superintendent Joe Meyer said at the February school board meeting. “It’s one of those things we’ve known for a long time. It’s just getting worse.”
The district posted nine open positions and only received a single application in the 10 days that followed. And MCC is not alone in its intensifying predicament. Meyer referenced a new state report by Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) that shows that 9 out of every 10 public school districts in Minnesota is “somewhat” or “very significantly” impacted by the teacher shortage. “We’re in that boat, probably ‘very significantly,’” Meyer said.
“We have some very serious concerns about filling our current openings for next year.” Unfortunately, it’s not just a local or state shortage. “It’s nationwide,” Meyer said. “I don’t think there’s a state that isn’t affected by the shortage.”
While MCC was forced to get creative and shift some positions around to fill certain voids this past year, the current challenges are unprecedented, according to Meyer. In response to board member Sue Streff’s question about open positions at the elementary for the upcoming school year, he reported that there were four general ed teaching positions open and that there were zero applicants so far.
“That’s unheard of,” Meyer said. “If there are any positions that used to to say, ‘Hey, can you send this out to your students?’ and they’re not even having that many graduate, too,” Freeman said. “It’s definitely a shortage problem.” Freeman said he’s also reached out to other post-secondary institutions, trying to send the MCC open employment link out as much as possible. “We’ve been posting it, calling people and trying to get recommendations,” he said. “I just wanted to reinforce that we’re trying. We’re not sitting back. But no one is applying.”
Additional collaboration possibilities are also being explored, but nothing has materialized so far, the administrators said. “I’ve reached out to Mr. (Michael) Pagel in Fulda, to see if they have anything we could share, and they don’t either,” Meyer said. “They’ve increased their class sizes, sometimes to 29 or 30 in a class in the elementary. They’re maxed out on that.”
Board member Brent Miller asked Meyer if he’d reached out to other districts, such as Westbrook-Walnut Grove, as well. “Are they in the same boat?” Miller asked.
Meyer affirmed that the smaller schools in the area were indeed in similar situations, adding that Southwest West Central Service Cooperative is also facing significant challenges. “They have 24 positions they don’t have filled this year,” Meyer said. “We always joke about stealing (employees) from each other, almost like recruiting. You hate to do that, but it’s kind of cut throat, too, for positions.” Despite being proactive, Meyer said there’s a feeling of hopelessness. “I wish there was something to do,” he said. “When we meet weekly, our superintendent group, this is a standing topic, to try and come up with ways of delivering. Is it online? Every decision we make, it might not be the best situation. It’s going to be tough for people to swallow.”
Meyer reminded the board that the district did some shifting last year because they weren’t able to fill some positions and said he anticipates having to do that again for the upcoming school year, unless something drastically changes in the near future. “We robbed from the elementary (last year) to fill some positions at the high school,” Meyer said. “And people are in ‘out of field’ placements. We get three years of kind of a grace period for that.”
Streff asked Meyer if there was anything the board could do to help with the grim situation. Meyer said that helping community members to understand the overall situation would be very helpful, adding that the sheer number of job openings isn’t quite as bad as it appears. “It’s not that we have every single one of those open,” he said. “It’s because we’re trying to accommodate the shifts we moved this year from elementary to high school. There’s a junior high math position that’s open. Right now, Brittany Berndt is in that role because we moved her from the elementary to the high school. There’s an elementary position open and a middle school math.”
A similar situation occurred with Christina Walker, who was moved from a junior high language position to a high school language arts position. “We’re posting both to try to maximize the openings that we have to try and get anybody to try and fit some of those roles,” Meyer said. There are also concerns of more overloads on teachers and other staff members. “There’s also a part-time technology person we need to find,” Meyer said. “It’s not sustainable for (Administrative Assistant) Deb (Bleyenberg) to be the tech coordinator, the MARS coordinator and my right-hand person. We’re trying to come up with creative ways to maybe combine some positions, something in that related field. But again, people aren’t there.”
Out of field placements are a possibility — or more likely, a probability — again this upcoming year, but doing so also has its challenges. “If you’re moving a teacher to a spot she doesn’t want to be, that can be challenging as well,” High School Principal Jacob Scandrett said. “We’re trying to maintain that excellence we’ve had here. We’ve had a little bit of a reduction in enrollment here, but not to the point where we can make drastic reductions or just absorb these positions, because it’s just not possible.” Scandrett reiterated that there is now an elementary music position open and pondered the possibility of not finding someone to fill it. “That’s a really hard piece,” he said. “What if we don’t find anyone there? If we can’t find people, how do we still provide the maximum number of opportunities for kids, while knowing we have to make some adjustments?”
Freeman said they also wanted to ensure teachers and staff that they are valued and that the administrators are conscious of their needs as well. “Looking at it from a teacher’s standpoint, it’s a concerning point,” he said. “It’s scary. I hope to reinforce that we’re trying and we’re open to ideas. It’s keeping me up at night for sure. Ultimately, it’s what kind of standard we want to set here at MCC and how this can impact a lot of people.”
Meyer shared that two local schools couldn’t find a music teacher last year, so they didn’t have music in their curriculum for K-12. He’s worried that downsizing the curriculum could lead to students leaving the district. “That’s concerning,” he said. “Do we start taking offerings away because we can’t fill the teaching positions? Then that has a domino effect. It’s easy to think, ‘Well, there’s only so many students that enjoy this subject or that subject,’ but it’s affecting their choices.” Ultimately, out of field placements and overloads are not sustainable. “Last year, we had an unfilled special ed position at the high school,” Meyer said. “We’ve had a teacher on overload this entire year. An overload is above and beyond a full time FTE. In order to make that workable, we have to try and find people who can fill those positions. The situation we’re in, is that there aren’t people there.”
Scandrett said it makes it difficult on everyone when the positions cannot be filled. “Teachers have an impact on the lives of thousands of kids during their career, and I have always thought that one of the most important parts of my job is to put quality teachers in front of kids,” he said. “Now I am being challenged just to find a person.”
Shifting the delivery systems or revamping the schedules is likely going to be part of the ongoing discussions. Reaching out to legislators will also continue. “There’s a three-year grace period if people are placed out of field, but once that is up, they can’t teach in those positions after that,” Meyer said. We’ve put our applications out there as far as we can go — nationally, regionally and a state listing through St. Cloud that goes out to everyone in the state of Minnesota. We’ve got too many openings.”
Meyer said the shortage also extends beyond licensed staff, noting that MCC has job openings for substitute teachers and paraprofessionals all year long. “It’s not just teaching positions,” he said. “It’s hard to hire people in all of the jobs we have — substitute teachers, paras, custodial staff, kitchen staff — all positions are hard to fill. We contract for busing, and they have a hard time getting bus drivers, to the point where they’re always arranging schedules because of it.” Even if legislators decide to offer free college for teachers or districts want to pay teachers more, it wouldn’t provide immediate solutions. “If we could pay people more, we would do that, but then again, we’re constrained by the budget and what the legislature provides us,” Meyer said. “And the pipeline isn’t full. It’s empty. So, we’re getting into crunch time in making some of these drastic changes.”
While there’s no way to know if several applications will begin filtering in or if there will be additional resignations or retirements this year, planning needs to take place now. Meyer said he’s worried that there may be gut-wrenching decisions that have to be made. “We’re on the front end of the hiring season, but even with that said, by the end of March, we have to start making some decisions on how we’re going to move forward because we can’t, on August 1 or September 1, change schedules and do those things,” Meyer said. “We have to plan ahead. And what that might look like, I just don’t know.”
