New Bedford, Fall River ranked among MA school districts with the most teacher vacancies.

NEW BEDFORD — Information from a research group at Study.com — an online tutoring and educational platform — found that as of Oct. 27, school systems in the SouthCoast's two urban centers of New Bedford and Fall River were among those high up on a list of Massachusetts districts with the most teacher vacancies.

Coming in at No. 4 was Fall River Public Schools, with Study.com citing 78 vacancies. New Bedford Public Schools was No. 6, with 61 vacancies, according to the researchers.

In prior correspondence from mid-September, Study.com researchers had said New Bedford Public Schools ranked No. 3. In the days that followed The Standard-Times' interviews with NBPS and FRPS administrators, Study.com updated NBPS' ranking, as of Oct. 27, to No. 10, while FRPS remained at No. 4.

Among other states, Massachusetts ranked No. 2 for most teacher vacancies per capita as of Oct. 17, according to Study.com.

Problem areas

As of Monday, Oct. 30, FRPS Executive Director of Human Resources Thomas Coogan said the district had closer to 70 teacher openings. Of those, about 33 were for special education teachers.

Other especially challenging areas to find teachers in are math, science and ESL (English as second language), Coogan said.

"If you look at those four areas together, that's probably about 50 of those 70 teaching positions we have open," he said.

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In an email containing a written statements from NBPS administrators, the question of which content areas were most difficult was not directly addressed; though it was noted that staff had insufficient time to provide more information due to scheduled professional development.

How are New Bedford and Fall River schools addressing teacher shortages?

While New Bedford Interim Superintendent Andrew O'Leary says districts have "no immediate or scalable solutions" to act as fix-alls to the widescale teacher shortage problem, NBPS is engaged in a number of outside-the-box efforts to bring more teachers on staff.

"The go-to response has been to return to the apparent source – to get the apple from the teacher college or university orchard," O'Leary wrote via email. "But the numbers districts see from higher education pipelines are sobering and successful sustained placement in classrooms has never been held as a meaningful metric for these pipelines."

Internal promotions

Something both NBPS and FRPS have in common in their teacher staffing efforts is an emphasis on finding and advancing teachers from a pool of existing staff.

One program that does this focuses on giving para-educators, who may or may not hold college degrees, a leg-up in becoming teachers.

"The Journey Into Education and Teaching (JET) Program, provides Para-Educators a pathway to secure a Bachelor’s Degree in Education at little to no cost to the Para-Educator," NBPS Executive Director of Human Capital Services Heather Elmsley wrote via email. "In addition, we provide mentors to those Para-Educators participating in the JET program.

While NBPS administrators did not provide totals for individuals who've taken advantage of JET and other programming, monthly personnel reports for July through October show a total of 20 teacher appointments marked as "promotions," which would include any former para-educators who became teachers.

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At FRPS, which is also engaged in the JET Program, Coogan said he believed three current teachers came up through JET, with another 10-11 in some stage of the program.

Coogan also noted that the Fall River School Committee has invested $250,000 to serve as course reimbursement for staff working toward some type of career advancement, including teacher certification.

"We are offering $1,000 a course, for a couple courses a year," Coogan said, noting ongoing bargaining discussions aimed at creating a mechanism to ensure individuals remain in the district for a certain amount of time after taking advantage of the funding. "We're also looking at certification programs for special education and ESL."

Elmsley said NBPS offers course reimbursement for any staff working under contract with bargaining units A (administrators) and B (teachers).

Subject-specific efforts

For para-educators with a bachelor's degree, Elmsley said NBPS has two "Academies" that provide support like "additional coursework and practicum experiences to assist Para-Educators that wish to pursue roles in teaching."

"Those interested in teaching English as a Second Language, can pursue the ESL Academy, currently in its 10th cohort," Elmsley said. "Two years ago, recognizing shortages in Special Education teachers throughout the state, we formed a Special Education Academy in partnership with Lesley University.

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"For those Para-Educators with degrees and an interest in assuming a teaching role, but not interested or able to take additional course work, we also provide free online MTEL tutoring services through a partnership with 240 Tutoring, to assist them in passing the required MTEL exams to secure teaching licenses in this state."

Things to consider when looking at teacher vacancies

While Coogan says there's no question teacher shortages create challenges in schools, there are a number of factors to take into context when looking at data on teacher vacancies.

"Not every vacancy listed means that there's a classroom somewhere with no teacher," Coogan said.

Third-party staffing agencies

For instance, for the current and previous school years, FRPS has taken the unusual measure of filling some staffing gaps with temp agency employees, Coogan said. Currently, the district has 30-33 such employees, including approximately 10 teachers, currently working in schools, according to Coogan. While this fills immediate needs for classroom coverage, those 10 or so teaching jobs will remain posted online as permanent positions to attract direct applicants and phase out the need for temps.

"The consideration of whether or not to use staffing agency employees is based on really how critical the need is for that position," Coogan said.

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New Bedford does not use third party staffing agencies, Elmsley said.

Creation of new positions

Another factor to consider, Coogan said, is the timing of newly created positions that push the number of total teaching vacancies up.

"In this past year we added about ... 75 new teacher positions," he said, noting about 33 of them are for special education. "So that didn't make us look any better at a time when hiring is particularly challenging."

It might also be considered that, compared to their suburban and rural counterparts, urban districts with their larger populations are inherently more likely to have a higher number of open positions.

For aspiring educators, there's no time like the present

While those currently looking to enter the education field should find no lack of open positions, Coogan cautions this may not always be the case.

"When I was going to college in the early '80s, we were going through this cycle where teaching jobs were kind of dried up," Coogan said, noting how those conditions delayed his entry into education for 15 years after graduating. "Education tends to ebb and flow in terms of job availability, and right now we're in a spot where jobs are plentiful.

"So for anyone who's considered getting into education, now is a great time."

Study.com's Top 10 Mass. districts with the most teacher vacancies, as of Friday, Nov. 3, were: 1. Marlborough Public Schools, 2. Boston Public Schools, 3. Springfield Public Schools, 4. Fall River Public Schools, 5. Brockton Public Schools, 6. Lynn Public Schools, 7. Framingham Public Schools, 8. Worcester Public Schools, 9. Everett Public Schools, and 10. New Bedford Public Schools.

According to a report from Study.com, 65% of 800 teachers surveyed said there was a teacher shortage at their school, and 71% indicated increased salaries as an ideal solution to teacher shortages in their state.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Fall River, New Bedford ranked high in Mass. for teacher vacancies