A smoldering teacher shortage threatens SC classrooms after COVID changed everything

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, things were starting to turn around for teachers.

The public hailed them as heroes who juggled their jobs, learning overnight to teach virtually, working hours upon hours of unpaid overtime and taking care of children who were confused and scared by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents, who struggled to teach their own children remotely, expressed awe at how difficult it actually is to be a teacher, according to articles published at the time.

But then something changed.

Community members slammed teachers for resisting a return to full, in-person classes. Teachers lost a public battle to be moved up in the S.C. vaccination schedule. Teachers fought, and sometimes even protested, their own districts for a perceived lack of action on teacher safety. And teacher unions, which fought most vocally for a slower return to in-person classes, became a regular punching bag on conservative talk shows.

That’s why many teachers are asking: is there any wonder why many teachers seek to leave the profession?

Roughly one in four South Carolina employees surveyed plan to leave their positions at the end of the year, according to an SC for Ed survey of 1,991 school employees published in March.

“I feel like the teaching profession isn’t as respected as it used to be,” said Kayla Hostetler, who teaches at Aiken High School.

Hostetler points to comments on social media saying that teachers just don’t want to work, or that they were being selfish by hesitating to return to in-person classes.

“It’s been a little disheartening to see that,” Hostetler said. “Our professional judgments are questioned quite a bit.”

As a result of both pre-existing conditions and new issues created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher morale is “lower than I’ve ever seen it and I’ve been teaching for over 10 years,” said Westwood High teacher Katherine Chandler

“They don’t feel valued. They feel like guinea pigs,” Chandler said of her colleagues. “They don’t feel their life is valued.”

The low morale and desire to leave often applies to all school staff, such as bus drivers, janitors and kitchen workers, Chandler said.

“It’s hard to walk around your school to see people who work really hard but aren’t getting paid very much,” Chandler said. “We live in one of the richest countries in the world. We should be able to” pay school employees more.

One of the reasons community members tend to armchair quarterback teachers is that nearly all adults attended school, so many think they know what teachers do, Hostetler said.

“You don’t really know the behind the scenes, the paperwork, the amount of time it takes to make sure all your lessons are accommodating,” Hostetler said. “We don’t see that as students.”

Many teachers take second jobs, while others try to find a way our of the profession altogether. However, many teachers believe they’re ensnared in their career choice. For one, many teachers base their budgets on using a federal program for teachers to forgive a portion of their student loan debt and can’t afford to leave the profession, Hostetler said.

If they can afford to leave the profession, there still aren’t many places to go, Hostetler said. While Hostetler said she knows teachers who left the profession and have found careers in human resources or building curricula at government education departments, an education degree isn’t as flexible as other degrees.

“What other career is going to take a degree in education?” Hostetler said.

Many of the factors pushing teachers away during the coronavirus pandemic — relatively low pay, a general lack of respect for teachers’ expertise, overcrowded classrooms and a teach-to-the-test culture — are the same factors that have been plaguing the industry for years.

“Before the pandemic, districts across the country, South Carolina included, have been grappling with teacher shortages,” said Titilayo Tinubu Ali, the research and policy director for the Southern Education Foundation.

“Research on teacher turnover points to lack of support from leadership. Often times strong principal leadership is one of the key things,” Tinubu Ali said.

Teachers also need up-to-date resources and time to plan lessons and prepare their classrooms, Tinubu Ali said.

“The money alone isn’t enough. They also want to have supportive leadership,” Tinubu Ali said. “Teachers really want great workplaces.”

However, a few flashpoints during the coronavirus pandemic in South Carolina may have further pushed away teachers, educators said.

One of those was when S.C. teachers, joined by powerful state lawmakers, pushed to be vaccinated more quickly so they could return to classrooms safely, Chandler said.

“Why not give people an extra week or so? Why not wait until after spring break for people to get that immunity?” Chandler asked.

S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster and the Department of Health and Environmental Control opposed moving teachers ahead in line because they wanted to vaccinate more seniors, who are more likely to die from COVID-19 than younger people.

“A lot of us went to North Carolina to get vaccinated,” Chandler said.

Other teacher grievances were more regional. In October, a group of Richland 2 teachers publicly berated the district for refusing remote-work requests for employees who had pre-existing health conditions. Shortly after that, a November SC for Ed survey of 206 Richland 2 employees found nearly half of them planned to quit their current position. By March, that number had deceased to 26%, which is the state average, according to the survey.

In December, after Lexington-Richland 5 proceeded with a plan to reopen face-to-face classes when cases were still high, so many teachers requested leave the district had to close three schools. Lexington 2 teachers also held an apparent protest in December when more than 20 employees at Brookland-Cayce High School requested leave.

For schools, the pandemic often hit home.

COVID-19 claimed the lives of several local teachers in the Columbia, S.C. area, including Demetria “Demi” Bannister, 28, of Windsor Elementary School; Bannister’s mother, Shirley Bannister of Midlands Technical College; Staci A. Blakely of Carolina Springs Elementary School, and most recently Damien Jackson, a coach and teacher at Dreher High.

Since the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, more than 16,000 cases have been diagnosed in S.C. schools, as of March 28, according to DHEC data. Even prominent educators, such as Richland 2 Superintendent Baron Davis and University of South Carolina President Robert Caslen, had tested positive for COVID-19.

A light at the end of the tunnel?

While teachers say morale is poor and many are considering leaving the profession, officials are reacting to the problem, and some evidence is emerging that indicates brighter days may be ahead.

As of February, there were at least 515 vacant teacher jobs throughout the state, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment Retention and Advancement. While that’s fewer than October, in which 680 positions were vacant, this is the first year the center conduced a mid-year survey of its kind, so it’s hard to compare the most recent number of vacancies to previous years, according to a report from the center.

The picture is not as bleak as in November, when 39% of teachers statewide said they planned to leave their current positions. But as of March one in four of surveyed teachers planned to leave their positions, according to the SCforEd data.

“We have to do something to sort of fix teacher morale,” said Steve Nuzum, a teacher at Ridge View High and a member of SCforEd who oversaw the survey.

Just days before SCforEd distributed its latest survey, an S.C. Senate committee approved implementing step increases for teachers that would add at least $650 to the average S.C. teacher salary, Nuzum said.

For teachers, progress has not been a one-way street, however.

Last year, the S.C. Senate proposed adding the planned teacher step increases, but the S.C. House blocked the step increases, citing budget constraints amid the pandemic.

In early March, the S.C. Senate passed, by a vote of 41-4, a bill aiming to retain teachers by reducing testing, increasing teacher reimbursements for supplies, expanding 4-year-old kindergarten and making it easier for the state to take over school districts considered to be failing.

While the bill is aimed at improving teacher working environments, education groups have criticized the proposal for not going far enough and for not consulting teachers when the bill was being written, The State previously reported. The groups also dislike making it easier for the state to take over school districts.

“Any solution has to really include the voices of teachers,” Tinubu Ali said.

On the plus side for teachers, Gov. McMaster has called for the General Assembly to increase their pay.

Midlands school districts have, in recent years, given bonuses to teachers when the districts’ budgets had surpluses. On March 23, Richland 2 school board unanimously approved, for the second year in a row, giving all full-time employees a $1,000 bonus after taxes and all part-time employees a $500 bonus after taxes, The State previously reported.

Last year, before the coronavirus pandemic upended education, Richland 1 gave similar bonuses to employees.

Coronavirus also provided an unintentional testing ground for what would happen if schools did away with standardized testing. Early in the pandemic, education officials canceled K-12 standardized tests such as the SCPASS and SC READY, The State previously reported.

The move to rely less on standardized testing had already been in the works for the ACT and SAT exams typically used for college admission.

Even before the pandemic, dozens of prominent universities, such as the University of Chicago, had made standardized testing optional, according to an article from education trade publication The Hechinger Report.

But when the pandemic hit, it forced many schools to reconsider their admissions requirements, since many students were unable to take the ACT or SAT. Schools dropping the ACT/SAT requirements even include Ivy League schools such as Harvard University and Yale University, according to CNBC.

“I think (a) reason teachers are possibly leaving is all this standardized testing stress on top of it. It’s hard to see how keeping standardized testing, especially his year, is good for students,” Hostetler said.

A teach-to-the-test culture can have counterproductive effects, Hostetler said. For example, students who enjoy reading are, naturally, better readers than those who dislike it, Hostetler said.

“Kids don’t like to read anymore,” Hostetler said. “We have beat the enjoyment out of reading by the time kids go to high school.”

Areas of greatest need

While the teacher shortage affects schools across the board, certain areas have more critical needs.

For example, special education teachers, science teachers and math teachers are in especially high demand, Tinubu Ali said.

There’s also a growing demand for Black elementary school teachers. That’s because Black students are more likely to graduate and enroll in college if they have at least one Black teacher. A 2017 Johns Hopkins University study found having a Black teacher between grades 3 and 5 reduced Black students’ probability of dropping out by 29%. A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found Black students who have at least one Black teacher between Kindergarten and 3rd grade are 19% more likely to enroll in college than their Black peers from the same school.

Davis, the Richland 2 superintendent, has cited recruiting Black teachers and introducing more Black culture into classrooms as one of the most effective ways to have a more inclusive learning environment.

“We talk about wealth or debt load, having programs that provide loans to teachers, provide scholarships to teachers, those are great for everyone,” Tinubu Ali said. “They’re especially great for diverse teachers who have been systemically shut out of opportunities to build wealth and taking on debt has a more detrimental effect on them and their families.”