Ledes from the Land of Enchantment

With teacher and substitute shortage, Santa Fe principals get creative | Education

Since almost two months after the start of the school year, five teaching positions at the Sweeney Elementary School are still vacant – and there are hardly any replacements – headmistress Dolores Montaño-Peña had to get creative.

It combines students from different grades and uses assessment data to determine where each child should be placed.

She has revised the curriculum to include a wide range of skills in each classroom.

She has allowed educational assistants who are still working on a teaching license to step in as class leaders.

Montaño-Peña and her assistant principal have also been teaching classes to ensure teachers have some preparation time.

“It’s more difficult this year,” said Montaño-Peña on Tuesday.

With students returning to classrooms online after more than a year of hiatus from the coronavirus pandemic, campus closure, and classroom relocation, schools in Santa Fe and across the state had a combination of teaching vacancies and a shortage of replacement teachers to fight.

Santa Fe public schools are also lacking enough educational assistants and bus drivers.

Meanwhile, Montaño-Peña said there are no volunteers who usually help in classrooms teaching students trying to catch up with their peers. She hopes that change will change after children under the age of 12 can get the COVID-19 vaccine and the volunteers are more comfortable attending school.

Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez said in an interview on Monday that the staffing problems in Sweeney are particularly urgent, but teacher openings are still open at other schools in Santa Fe – including the Desert Sage Academy, the district’s only online option.

District-wide about 36 apprenticeships are still open, said personnel director Howard Oechsner.

According to preliminary data from New Mexico State University, this month compares 1,048 teaching positions across the country. That’s an increase from 571 at this time last year, researcher Rachel Boren told state lawmakers on the Legislative Finance Committee during a hearing on Tuesday.

According to Oechsner, there are 120 or more teacher absenteeism or positions to be filled every day in the district. About 75 spots are left after 45 or 50 substitute teachers sign up on the district’s roles for the day, he added.

This year the district has a pool of 115 substitute players. Typically there are at least 200, but the number has decreased since the coronavirus pandemic broke out in early 2020.

District administrations and school principals regularly rely on teachers to take over combo classes and sell their prep time to fill in gaps in finding replacements.

“Until everything is filled, we will concentrate constantly on getting people into these positions,” said Oechsner. “That costs a lot of time from our school principals and our department heads.”

Oechsner also said the district has seen more resignations than usual this year – a few per week.

Montaño-Peña said several former teachers in Sweeney, southwest of the city, had left their jobs to look after aging parents or children.

In the past, she received a batch of applications for every vacant teaching position and interviewed a recruiting committee. Now, she laughs, it feels more like the few candidates who are applying for vacancies are interviewing her.

“It’s so interesting to see this shift,” said Montaño-Peña.

When her teachers – many of them newly hired and some from outside the United States – had to attend mandatory training last week and there were no subs available to fill their classrooms, Montaño-Peña sent younger students in Sweeney twice on daily schedule of special classes such as Physical education.

“That worked really well,” she says. “But at the end of the week, mine [elective teachers] were exhausted. “

Montaño-Peña is still optimistic that the children will return to the classroom with their peers this year when more apprenticeships are filled at their school, which looks after around 350 students.

The hunt for teachers and substitutes during the ongoing pandemic is a nationwide issue. California saw a decrease of 17,000 licensed substitutes between the 2018/19 and 2020-21 school years, according to a recent Business Insider report.

School districts across the country are offering salary increases to attract more replacements.

The Santa Fe Public Schools held two job fairs this summer to recruit substitutes and professionals in other areas interested in an alternative path to a teaching license. The effort resulted in 18 new hires in July; a further 11 letters of offer were sent to potential employees in August.

The district also hosted a job fair for the transportation department, which resulted in two hires.

But Oechsner said bus drivers are still doubling their routes, and administrators who are licensed to drive buses are stepping in to help.

A job fair, scheduled for Thursday from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Nye Early Childhood Center, is open to people interested in training as an educational assistant.

The Ministry of Public Education recently announced that it is investing

$ 37 million in federal pandemic aid for an initiative that will help districts pay new educational assistants to help increase the adult-to-student ratio in classrooms. The application deadline for the 89 school districts and approximately 60 newly established schools of New Mexico was Monday; The agency said it received 44 applications.

Low wages have been a barrier to the buildup of the state’s teaching staff, said educators and lawyers.

The minimum wage for teachers in New Mexico is based on a three-tier system, depending on educational level and experience. Beginners now start at $ 41,000 per year.

“Higher salaries would be a great advantage for us when we try to recruit teachers, as we try to encourage our current students to become teachers in the teacher training colleges,” said Oechsner.

Until the places in the Montaño-Peña classrooms are filled, she tries to help teachers juggle professional training and combined classrooms to keep their workload as low as possible.

“My co-workers were superheroes,” she said.

Montaño-Peña added: “The most important thing they are telling me is ‘I need more time, I need more time’. ”

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