SC has a teacher shortage. But teachers who leave can be blackballed from coming back

South Carolina schools are suffering from a shortage of hundreds of teachers, with the number of vacancies only growing. But that hasn’t stopped the state from barring scores of teachers who may want to return to the classroom.

Last year, South Carolina suspended the teaching certificates of 166 teachers for a period of between one month and three years, according to records published by the State Board of Education. Some of them have been suspended for unethical or even criminal behavior, written orders from the board show, but many have been suspended purely for leaving their jobs before the end of their contracts.

In South Carolina, teachers sign a one-year contract before the beginning of the school year, and school boards have the option to recommend a suspension to the state board if any teacher walks out of the classroom before the end of the year.

But teachers’ organizations say the way the law is applied now is inflexible, doesn’t take into account the reasons teachers may need to quit their jobs, and is shutting the schoolhouse door on willing teachers at a time when South Carolina school districts are having trouble filling teacher positions.

Jamie Minto knows firsthand what that feels like. When her husband got a new job, the couple moved to Marion ahead of the 2021-22 school year, where she got a job as a reading interventionist for the county school district. But then her husband’s position was eliminated shortly after their arrival. He moved back to Anderson County when he got another job there, but Minto found she couldn’t follow him because she was locked into a year-long contract with the school district.

“Even though I’m a wife and a mother of two small children, they expect that I have to stay there and live pretty much separately,” Minto said. “It’s another aspect where teachers are not always treated as professionals.”

When Minto did leave her job early in the school year, the Marion County school board referred her to the State Board of Education for a suspension. By talking to the school district, she managed to get her suspension narrowed so that it expired ahead of the next school year, in time for her to start work as a science teacher in Anderson School District 3.

In a statement to The State, the S.C. Department of Education said that many other stresses in the education field are causing teachers to walk away from the profession, whether it results in a suspension of their teaching certification or not.

“Based on the feedback we have heard from both educators and district human resources professionals, most teachers make the choice to leave the profession over burnout and lack of support in addressing student behavior,” department spokesman Jason Raven said. In response, the department has put resources into “character and resiliency education” for students to have the skills to implement “common values.”

But the possibility of losing her ability to teach and work was a source of stress for Minto, alongside her family concerns. Even though she felt like she had followed all the steps laid out by the district to get out of her contract, Minto hired an attorney in an effort to stave off a suspension, and then she had to reapply for her license over the summer when the suspension ended. That included paying a fee and going through the process of being fingerprinted again.

“I can’t believe they have that kind of power over someone’s career,” she said.

Now Minto is advocating for a legislative change backed by teachers’ organizations in South Carolina. The bill, H.4280 or the Educator Assistance Act, would:

• Allow teachers to opt out of their contracts within 10 days of the publication of the district’s salary schedule, which often comes after teachers have already signed their contracts for the next year;

• Limit the amount of time a school district has to report a breach and give the state board more flexibility in issuing suspensions;

• Move the starting date of a suspension from the date of the state board’s action to the day a teacher quit, which would allow a suspended teacher to return to the classroom sooner;

• And cut the maximum suspension for a breach of contract from a year down to six months.

The bill has already passed the S.C. House of Representatives unanimously but is awaiting action in the Senate Education Committee. The bill will die if no action is taken before the legislative session ends on May 9.

“Amid a record educator shortage, with more vacancies than any year we’ve collected that data, it is the height of insanity to suspend the license of someone who wants to teach and haven’t done anything to endanger a student,” said Patrick Kelly, director of government affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association.

At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, South Carolina school districts reported 1,613 open positions, a 9% increase over the year before, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement. An update from February 2024 showed another 924 teachers had left the classroom since the school year began.

The Education Department is supportive of changes that would give the State Board of Education more flexibility in how it handles teacher contract disputes.

“The Educator Assistance Act lays out reasonable timelines that give an educator in a breach-of-contract situation more certainty while simultaneously allowing the State Board to make situation-specific decisions,” Raven said. “The SCDE is appreciative of (bill sponsor Rep. Shannon) Erickson’s leadership in finding this push to find the balance between providing stability to students through a consistent classroom presence and accounting for unavoidable circumstances that may arise to take a teacher out of their classroom.”

‘We’re not treated as professionals’

One former teacher spoke to The State anonymously because she has a breach of contract complaint pending before the Board of Education. She moved to South Carolina to take a position as an art teacher, only to find a disorganized classroom lacking supplies and twice the number of classes on her schedule as she had agreed to.

“I spoke to the principal, and he said, ’Well, you signed a contract, and if you leave, we can take your certification,’” the teacher said. “I have two bachelors and a masters. You want to know why teachers are leaving? It’s because we’re not treated as professionals.”

After taking off the rest of the school year, the teacher reached back out to the school district to see if she would be able to seek another teaching job. The district told her they had long since forgotten to forward their breach-of-contract complaint to the state board — but thanks to her reminder, would do so now.

While this teacher is fighting her suspension, she’s now working outside of education and is unsure if she will go back to the classroom at this point even if she avoids a suspension.

Other teachers report similar experiences. One teacher in Greenville County told the state board she resigned because the district had her commuting between classes at two different schools with very little time for her to get from one to the other.

Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, once taught in Aiken County but applied for a job with the York 1 school district because it would be shorter drive to her family in West Virginia. She thought everything was going well, even looking at apartments in Rock Hill, until the York County school district told her it was not going to happen, because Aiken was not going to let her out of her contract.

“I said, ‘They can’t do that, I’ll just leave,’” East remembers. “And they said, ‘They don’t have to let you go, and if you do they can take your certificate, and we won’t be able to hire you.’”

East had to ride out the rest of her contract that year, and got a job with the Rock Hill school district in York County the following year.

Some teachers who have gone through a hearing with the state board or appealed to their local school district have managed to avoid the strictest penalties. A dozen teachers in the past year who quit their jobs early were able to receive an “order of public reprimand” from the board that chided them for breaking their contract but imposed no other penalty. Others received shorter suspensions or even managed to get the date of their suspension moved back.

One former Cherokee County teacher who quit due to health concerns went through a hearing with the board and managed to get her three month suspension applied retroactively, meaning it expired 18 months before the board issued its decision.

‘They’re never coming back’

Teachers cited in the state board’s suspension orders often said they needed to move because of changes in their family’s situation, a spouse’s job change, or a sudden health emergency for themselves or a family member. One teacher quit midyear because she had to move out of state to care for her ailing mother.

Only one teacher in the state records cited the COVID-19 pandemic, which completely upended teachers’ schedules and work conditions along with the rest of the school system, as a reason for leaving their job. But 30 other teachers said health concerns were pushing them out of the job and often the profession entirely, something Kelly ascribes to the additional stresses the pandemic put on teachers’ lives.

Previously, “it was almost unheard of to leave in the middle of the school year unless there was a dire reason to do so,” Kelly said. “Now it’s pretty commonplace, and it’s got to the point where when we tell our members it might lead to their license getting suspended, they say it doesn’t matter because they’re never coming back to the profession.”

“That’s not a light or transient thing,” Kelly said. “If you have a physical or mental health need, it’s inhumane not to give them the capacity to do so without revoking their certificate.”

A variety of factors are contributing to teachers leaving the classroom more regularly, said Beth Costner, dean of the Richard W. Riley College of Education, Sport and Human Sciences at Winthrop University.

Teachers face more pressure to be the ones to respond to students’ mental health needs, which have also become a greater concern in the aftermath of the pandemic, “but when you don’t feel prepared to provide those services add to the stress level,” Costner said. That’s on top of a “political climate” that Costner says has become more hostile to how teachers conduct their classrooms.

“There are a lot of things you can and can’t say,” Costner said. “You worry about the materials that you use. Sometimes you don’t agree with the focus of the textbook you’re forced to use. ... So it’s a lot of the culture war happening on the national stage, on political campaign trails and in the classroom.”

SC teacher’s racism lesson was shut down by book ban. But she’s still talking about it

But Costner said the current system is designed to protect school districts from losing teachers during the school year and facing the disruptions those departures would cause to students’ learning.

“If you’re teaching on Friday and decide not to come back Monday, that’s a big deal for a school district,” she said. “There are not a lot of people in line to take that teaching position. Also has to take into account the school district’s side, responsibility to students and families to provide education.”

The Education Department likewise acknowledged that “districts face a huge challenge to effectively staff classrooms,” Raven said.

East said the problems often stem from a lack of protections for teachers in the standard contract. Teachers are hired by the district, and everything from the school they teach in to the subject they teach can be changed after they’re locked into the contract.

“We had one member, a veteran teacher, who was told at Christmas one year that your assignment is changing when you come back from Christmas break,” East said. “They tell them three hours before break, and it’s a whole new prep. They had to figure out a chemistry lesson plan over Christmas break ... and it’s not like the former teacher died. Some parents just decided didn’t like the teacher, so the district moved some stuff around to make a new class, because of the parents.

“We’re trying to get some protections in our contract,” East said.

Richland 1 has ‘little regard’ for teachers, parents and others say after sudden transfers