West central Illinois communities struggle with lack of teachers

By Editor | January 19, 2022 |

Annual survey indicates problem is getting worse

By ANDREW ADAMS

Editor’s Note: Andrew Adams is a student in the Public Affairs Reporting program at University of Illinois Springfield who is a reporting intern at the Capitol for the State Journal-Register in Springfield.

Matt Plater has been in charge of school districts for more than two decades. Something is happening he’s never seen before. Jobs that used to draw hundreds of applications now get a dozen. More specialized positions might not get any at all.

“It’s horrible,” he said. “This is my 23rd year as a superintendent in Illinois and this is the worst it’s ever been.”

Plater oversees Havana Community Unit School District 126, a small district in Mason County with about 1,000 students spread across three schools. In 2020, the district couldn’t find a Spanish teacher, so they contracted with an outside company to offer remote instruction.

Students worked in a classroom with an in-person monitor while they worked online. They’ve cycled through four Spanish teachers in five years.

“We went a year and a half without a PE teacher,” Plater said.

Havana isn’t alone. Western Illinois is the epicenter of an educator shortage that affects the entire state.

Ninety-five percent of superintendents in the region said they were facing a “minor to serious” problem with finding teachers, according to a 2021 survey commissioned by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools and Illinois State University.

The problem is getting worse, according to the survey, which also revealed that 86 percent of districts statewide are receiving fewer qualified applicants than in past years.

This lack of qualified applicants has forced some districts to have teachers instruct classes in subjects they aren’t qualified to teach.
“Virtually every district in downstate Illinois has a teacher teaching something they’re not 100 percent qualified in,” Plater said.
Jill Reis leads Regional Office of Education 1, an oversight and support agency for school districts in Adams, Brown, Cass, Morgan, Pike, and Scott counties.

“COVID has definitely compounded the issue,” Reis said.

As of Jan. 14, the Illinois Department of Public Health listed 78 active COVID-19 outbreaks at K-12 schools. One in five of them are at schools in West Central Illinois. Sangamon County alone has had four outbreaks linked to schools.

This has exacerbated the problem by highlighting the lack of substitute teachers available to schools in the region. Where districts were able to get by for a time by relying on retired teachers to come in and sub for a day or two, they’re unable to do so with the risk of COVID.

“You take someone who retired five years ago, who may be living with an immunocompromised person,” Reis said. “They just won’t do it.”

This has led to districts looking everywhere to find people to watch classrooms, including superintendents, who are now covering cafeteria duty, driving buses and teaching classes.

In Jerseyville, on the border between west central Illinois and the Metro-East, Jerseyville Community School District 10 Superintendent Brad Tuttle is beginning to see the effects of the teacher shortage.

“This year is the first year, certainly since I’ve been here, where we’ve had difficulties,” he said, adding that because his district is more funded than some neighboring districts, higher pay and more up-to-date facilities have made the district attractive to candidates.

Tuttle is particularly worried for the future of vocational education in his district, a sentiment echoed by Reis. Though he has staff to teach career and technical education now, they will eventually leave or retire.

“I’m scared of who I’m gonna hire to replace those teachers,” he said.

The teacher shortage problem has multiple causes. The survey of superintendents found that these include strict licensing standards in Illinois and a perceived degradation of the respect that educators once had. There are also practical issues, like pay and pension.

“I think they’re gonna have to fix the pension system,” Plater said.

In 2011, the state introduced a new pension system which increased the minimum age of retirement from 55 to 62 and decreased some of the benefits available to retirees in the system.

Over the years, that system has been criticized for being poorly managed. In 2020, the organization that administers teacher retirements in Illinois reported $80.7 billion in unfunded liabilities, meaning it had 40 cents for every dollar it will owe to teachers when they retire.
IARSS recommends several policies it says will address the problem. Those include increasing funding for new teacher mentoring programs and scholarship programs for minority teachers, addressing working conditions in schools and creating an online teacher recruitment system.

Reis said she is hopeful for “grow-your-own” programs which aim to encourage local students in high schools and colleges to go into education. The idea is that they are more likely to stay rooted in their home communities, where finding teachers can be difficult. The median distance between schools that teachers attended and the schools they now work in is 13 miles, according to the IARSS.

Many are geared toward increasing the number of teachers of color in the field, though similar approaches can be used in many types of communities.

“You’re seeing more high schools offer electives leaning toward education,” Reis said.

■ Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

IARSS survey summary

TOP RESULTS
Illinois school districts report the teacher shortage problem has worsened from last year in virtually all major areas:

■ 88 percent of schools say they have a teacher shortage problem, and 77 percent report the shortage is getting worse
■ 93 percent of districts expect the shortage will worsen over the 2023 and 2024 academic years
■ More than 2,000 positions are either not filled or filled by someone not qualified to teach there – more than double the amount reported from the last school year
■ 96 percent of schools report a substitute teacher shortage problem
■ More than 400 classes were canceled, and nearly that many sent online because schools simply had no one to teach them in person

While administrator shortages are much less severe, schools report they’re having a harder time finding qualified candidates amid retirements and are more and more concerned those struggles will grow over time
COVID-19 EFFECT
As students returned to classrooms, schools have struggled to fill needed gaps in educator availability during the pandemic. More than 70 percent say the pandemic has created budget or logistical challenges increasing hiring needs. Nearly 60 percent of districts report increased hiring of teachers and paraprofessionals during the pandemic.

But the actual effects of COVID-19 on day-to-day school instruction goes much deeper. Administrators report their teachers and staff are burned out, their substitute teacher pools are bare as more educators choose to retire or not return to the classroom, and very public battles over mask and other education mandates are taking a heavy toll.

“Anyone ‘on the fence’ about becoming or staying an educator is likely not going to be around,” reported one elementary school leader in northwest Illinois.

AROUND THE STATE
While shortage problems are evident in all parts of Illinois, rural school districts report the most significant problems and the worst outlook ahead. The most severe shortage problems are found in west central and east central Illinois – each region has more than 90 percent of schools reporting shortages. Shortages are also most extreme in unit districts.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
IARSS debuted its statewide shortage study in 2017, when 77 percent of schools reported a shortage problem and 95 percent say they struggled to find substitute teachers. But the survey has proven to be an important tool for helping education leaders and policymakers identify cracks throughout the educator pipeline and develop a series of short-term and long-term solutions. Various legislative proposals have made it easier for retired teachers to dedicate more time in a return to the classroom, increased scholarships for those who want to teach in subject areas that have the largest shortages, improved mentoring programs and licensure processes, and increased benefits.

WHAT’S NEXT
IARSS and its survey partners have worked to identify both the major challenges behind the shortage crisis, and a menu of ways to turn around its growing momentum.

Policy recommendations included in the 2021 study include:
■ Increased funding throughout the teacher pipeline: enticing more young people to go into the field and better supporting those who start but can be tempted to leave
■ Streamlining restrictive requirements to get into teaching and substitute teaching
■ Expanding programs that recruit and support minorities and those who teach in high-need subject areas
■ Helping schools find more candidates to meet short-term educator shortage needs