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In the coming days, students will return to classrooms across Maine (they’ve already done so in Aroostook County). With this late summer ritual, there are common, if simple expectations. Buses will show up to ferry children to and from school. Students will be met by teachers in their various classrooms. Students will be able to grab a hot lunch in the cafeteria (free for all students, continuing a practice begun with federal funding during the pandemic).
In many communities — in Maine and across the country — these expectations may be dashed as school districts, even with opening day looming or already in the rearview mirror, scramble to find people to fill essential positions.
“We’re in a real critical situation as schools will open in a few weeks,” Grace Leavitt, the president of the Maine Education Association, told me in July.
Leavitt, a high school Spanish teacher in SAD 51, which includes Cumberland and North Yarmouth, said she was very concerned about the numerous vacancies across the state. Adding to the problem, some districts are seeing few or even no applicants for open educational jobs.
There are shortages of teachers, educational technicians — who are critical for special education students — bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians.
“We do have a lot of openings and we have almost no applicants for these jobs, so it’s a little scary,” Timothy Doak, a superintendent in central Aroostook County, recently told The Maine Monitor. With the first day of school just days away, he said he was still looking for teachers, school bus drivers, cooks and custodians.
Doak said he may ask teachers to come out of retirement to fill gaps in his district. He also is considering busing students to other schools or trying online learning options so they can get the classes they need.
Beyond the immediate problem of having staff for this school year, Leavitt and Doak both point to the concerning lack of applicants for jobs. That means a shrinking number of people are considering careers in education.
Sadly, that should come as no surprise.
Educators have long been undercompensated, even despite recent raises in teacher pay, for the critical work they do. Many children spend more time (while they are awake) in school than they do at home. Educators don’t simply teach; they nurture, they comfort, they support, they mentor and sometimes they clothe and even house students.
For this, they are increasingly being targeted and second-guessed, by a small number of people to be sure, but the anti-educator rhetoric is wearing down current educators and dissuading new people from entering the field. There is also a shortage of principals and superintendents, who often take the brunt of public ire at school board meetings.
The lack of respect, a growing workload, relatively low pay, concerns about safety — which were centered on COVID for two years, but also include heightened school security measures to deter school shootings — all add up to a job that has become less attractive, educators say.
“I was a teacher for 21 years and I retired last year,” Charla Detjens, a teacher on the West Coast, recently told the Washington Post’s Petula Dvorak. “I will go work retail or something rather than go back into the classroom after the vitriol from the community about teachers and COVID.”
“The crisis isn’t the lack of teachers,” Dvorak wrote in a recent column. “It’s the nationwide disrespect for those in the profession.”
Parents and other community members can’t magically fix all these problems, but they can help.
“Society needs to do all it can to value educators,” Leavitt said.
That starts by trusting educators to do their jobs. As people who have devoted their careers to education, they know what materials are most appropriate for their students. They know what subjects to cover and how. They aren’t “grooming” children to be LGBTQ.
Of course, if parents have concerns about what their children are learning, they should talk to their students’ teachers directly, calmly and without accusations and threats.
Volunteering in school is helpful. So is contributing to school fundraisers.
But if you really want to help — and you have the time — consider becoming a substitute teacher. That need is critical. Or think about becoming a teacher, ed tech or a bus driver.
Your schools — and your kids — need you.
