‘Locomotive that we’ve seen coming’: How did KC area teacher shortage get this bad?

In Kansas City’s most affluent suburbs, where districts pay the highest salaries and traditionally have had an easier time recruiting teachers, schools have been struggling to ensure every classroom is staffed this fall.

The Blue Valley school district in Johnson County — with among the highest starting teacher salaries in the metro at $46,000 — reported a high of 250 resignations and retirements this spring. The district started the school year short 90 paraprofessionals, said Eric Punswick, chief human resources officer.

“It doesn’t matter what job it is right now in our district, the pools of applicants are much smaller than they were even 10 years ago,” Punswick said. “So when we post a job, we know we’re in competition with all of our neighbors, but also regionally, and with some virtual schools and other jobs out there that teachers are qualified for.”

Urban and rural districts have felt the pains for years.

Some urban areas, serving many minority and low-income students, have long struggled to fill vacancies. Jennifer Waddell, director of teacher education for University of Missouri-Kansas City, said that’s why the university in 2005 launched the Institute for Urban Education. The program recruits students from urban districts like Kansas City Public Schools to earn degrees in education, aiming to fill jobs in city schools.

But now, educators say the teacher shortage has appeared to reach every corner of the Kansas City metro.

“We know that there are fewer people going into the teaching profession. Universities have been sounding this alarm for several years. But we have not felt it in suburban Kansas City up until now,” said Todd Schuetz, assistant superintendent of human resources for the North Kansas City school district.

In Kansas, education officials have warned that the state is seeing its worst ever teacher shortage. In April, the state had 1,381 teaching vacancies, up from 1,253 in October. Last fall, officials said that vacancies had risen roughly 62% over the year before. In Missouri, the state reported this spring that there were 2,184 vacancies in elementary education alone.

Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools began the school year 92% staffed, with about 100 teacher vacancies, spokesman Edwin Birch said.

Over the past decade, education experts have witnessed a worsening teacher shortage, predicting years ago that retirements would begin to outpace entry into the profession, Waddell said.

“In our local districts, we are getting daily emails and phone calls from school leaders asking if we have any teachers,” Waddell said. “It’s being felt locally, even in some of our districts that historically have not had any difficulty filling positions.”

For years, Waddell said, experts have noticed fewer people entering the profession, and teachers were not staying as long as they used to.

“The earlier generation became teachers and stuck with it. That doesn’t happen anymore, because of the stresses of teaching, the politics involved in teaching,” said Jon Turner, a retired teacher and associate professor of educational leadership at Missouri State University.

“People don’t see this as a place I want to be for 30 years. We’re having much more turnover at younger ages. And that’s a problem. You’ve got to make it a career where people want to stay or else you’re constantly going to have to be front-loading with new pathways to get people into teaching.”

Meanwhile, teacher pay has been stagnant for years. A new Economic Policy Institute report states that teachers are paid less than other professionals with similar college educations. And that has worsened over time.

It says the average weekly wages of public school teachers, adjusted for inflation, rose only $29 from 1996 to 2021, from $1,319 to $1,348, in 2021 dollars. By comparison, inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose by $445 over the same period, from $1,564 to $2,009.

Missouri ranks last in the nation for average starting teacher salaries, at $33,234, according to a report by the National Education Association. It’s 47th in the country for average teacher salaries overall, at $51,557. Kansas places 37th for starting salaries, at $39,100.

And at the same time, teachers say that their jobs have gotten harder. That has led many to retire or leave the profession over the past few years, as the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues led to mounting workloads.

“This is the locomotive that we’ve seen coming down the track for years,” said Independence Superintendent Dale Herl. “COVID just made it that much more of an issue. Because we already had fewer college students going into education, and on top of that you throw in more teachers who decided to either retire or leave education. And my concern is this is only going to get worse unless we find a way to get more young people into education.”

Over the past few years, teachers were asked to learn how to run classes over Zoom in a matter of days, then pivot to in-person classes and then back online again. They tracked down students who stopped showing up during COVID. They taught multiple classes at once when substitutes weren’t available. They’ve driven buses and served lunch in the cafeteria. And they’ve dealt with an apparent rise in student behavioral issues since the pandemic.

Educators also cite fears over gun violence and mass shootings, and a general lack of safety, as their reasons for leaving in recent years. Denise Souza, a former Kansas City Public Schools teacher, previously told The Star that she decided to leave her job after 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, this spring.

Teachers have been caught in the middle of hot topic national political debates, including over COVID-19 masks and vaccines, how schools teach students about race and diversity, and whether books with racial and LGBTQ themes should be banned from libraries. The result, many teachers say, is a diminishing feeling of respect and reverence for the profession. More attacks on social media. And less support from the community.

They are begging for help.

“I can’t think of anything more important to our communities than successful schools. If we have a threat like the teacher shortage, what does that mean down the road?” Schuetz said. “What does that mean for economic development? What does that mean for the success of our communities? I encourage the public to be aware of this issue and continue to support our schools and support our children.

“It is critical that we respond to this appropriately and don’t approach solving the problem in the same ways that we have in the past.”