Assignment: California's Teacher Shortage

Education is the cornerstone of life's success. It starts with the benefit of having a teacher who provides you with mentoring and early guidance. California and the nation are facing a teaching shortage. How is that impacting Santa Cruz?

Santa Cruz County is filled with challenges because of the high cost of living in our region. Take a look at the recent news story about the teacher shortage in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD). PVUSD needs Teachers is a critical concern facing mid and south county families as the new school years begins.

Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter, Nicholas Ibarra writes that the Pajaro Valley Unified School District had 62 job openings posted requiring a teaching credential. About 20 of those positions are for full-time classroom teachers, said Chona Killeen, the district's new assistant superintendent of human resources.

The shortage of teachers goes well beyond Pajaro Valley Unified School District. Three quarters of California school districts cannot find enough qualified teachers to fill vacancies, according to a 2016 report.

Teachers in America are dropping out, leaving the profession at twice the rate of teachers in high-achieving school systems like those in Finland and Ontario, Canada. And they're departing in large part because their principals do not support them, according to a report released Tuesday.

We are losing an invaluable community resource when we don't have qualified credentialed teachers. How can we convince half of those who leave to stay? The teacher shortage that puts thousands of under-qualified emergency replacements in classrooms each year "could be virtually eliminated," according to the report from the Learning Policy Institute, a Palo Alto research group.

As California legislators work to entice teachers into the field through housing subsidies and loan-forgiveness programs, the report points out that the rush of teachers out of the profession is perhaps the more dominant driver of a national shortage of teachers, a shortfall most acute in the fields of special education, science, math and English language development.

The report states that about 90 percent of teacher vacancies nationwide are created by teachers leaving the profession. Less than one-third of those who leave are retiring, while two-thirds are beginning or mid-career teachers who are walking away from the job for reasons other than retirement.

Salary limits combined with job satisfaction and cost of living, especially in high cost coastal regions of California, are reasons that younger teachers are not staying in the profession. According to salary.com, the median annual High School Teacher salary in Santa Cruz is $65,268, as of August 03, 2017, with a range usually between $51,714-$76,665 not including bonus and benefit information and other factors that impact base pay.

The median annual Elementary School Teacher salary is $62,595 with a range usually between $51,275-$74,243 not including bonus and benefit information and other factors that impact base pay.

The median annual salary in Pajaro Valley Unified School District is lower based on the 120 reported teacher salaries at $55,351 per year.

By comparison Santa Clara County Teachers are paid slightly more: The median annual Elementary School Teacher salary in Santa Clara, CA is $67,078 with a range usually between $54,947-$79,561.

Marshall Tuck, a candidate for state Superintendent of Education, was most recently an educator-in-residence at the Santa-Cruz based New Teacher Center - a national nonprofit that works with school districts on teacher staffing issues. He said the state should provide financial incentives for residency programs, in which new teachers spend their first year under the wing of an accomplished teacher, gradually taking on teaching responsibilities. Loan assistance and tuition grants to draw candidates to teaching and comprehensive coaching for new teachers would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars - not the billions of dollars it would take to raise teacher pay, say, 20 percent, which should be the state's long-term goal, he said.

Pairing a non-profit leader in the educational space would help local teachers and may lead to better retention of young teachers. However, the other factors in our region - career opportunities in growing high income level job sectors (technology and medical, and business services) and improving our infrastructure to ensure a more mobile and sustainable community - need to be addressed, too.