The Española School District, along with other local districts and state officials, are looking into ways to alleviate the shortage of qualified teachers, especially in traditionally hard-to-fill subjects which include technology, math and science.
Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said the problem is especially evident at Española Middle School, where Principal Julie Gutierrez called New Mexico State University, to inquire if they had any education science majors ready to graduate this month.
“We’ve all got shortages of math and science,” Bobbie Gutierrez said. “We were told at our superintendent meeting on Friday, Dec. 4, that the colleges of education had very few graduates.”
She said the District was told that three prospective teachers were graduating this month from New Mexico State, while eight more were projected to finish school in May. She said there was a lot of competition with other Districts for the few graduates.
“We have some openings coming up for teachers and substitutes,” she said.
Bobbie Gutierrez said the state’s Public Education Department is proposing a number of new initiatives to tackle the problem, including providing funding innovative education practices in school districts and charter schools, as well as looking at tapping into the state’s rich content expertise, through hiring professionals as adjunct instructors.
Proposal
U.S. Rep Conrad James, R-Albuquerque, sponsored House Bill 181 on Jan. 27, which aims to provide flexibility for school districts to recruit professionals from their community with content expertise, to teach courses relevant to their professional degrees and/or backgrounds.
According to a bill analysis made public by the Public Education Department on Jan. 28, HB 181 establishes an adjunct instructor certification, which allows any individual with professional expertise in a particular subject area, to enter into a contract with a school district or charter school to teach courses directly related to the adjunct instructor’s area of expertise, at no more than half of a full-time teacher’s workload.
Bobbie Gutierrez said she feels the reasoning behind the bill is sound.
“We know that the higher the content knowledge of the teacher, students do better,” she said. “If we have a vacancy at the middle school in science, and we had a parent that wanted to come down from Los Alamos and teach the last couple of periods of the day, that would be permissible on a part-time basis.”
According to information made available by the Public Education Department, in order to obtain an adjunct teaching license, candidates would have to meet the following eligibility requirements:
• They must possess a bachelor’s degree
• They must demonstrate three years of documented work experience in the subject field
• They must acquire a passing score on appropriate teacher license assessments
• They must successfully complete a pedagogy class.
Additionally, adjunct teachers under this license will be evaluated through the existing state evaluation system.
Causes
There have been a number of issues leading to the present state of the District and the teacher shortages according to the superintendent.
“I think for a long time we’ve known that eventually there would be a teacher shortage,” Bobbie Gutierrez said. “It’s been predicted for more than 20 to 25 years that one was coming and that was just based on the historical data.”
She said the number of teachers coming into the school districts, versus the number of teachers retiring, has been disproportionate for some time.
“I believe it was some point in the ’90s where that tipped to where we actually had more teachers retiring than new teachers coming into the field,” she said. “Not only here in New Mexico, but across the nation.”
Gutierrez said part of the erosion of colleges of education in universities, has partly to do with incentives for other careers where there is a potential over the course of a lifetime to have a much higher income in earning than in teaching.
“I think sometimes teachers say that it’s not the money so much as it is the motivation and work atmosphere,” she said.
District officials point to class sizes going up in New Mexico during the financial crisis, while funding was taken away from the schools by the state. Gutierrez said these funds, which were previously utilized to support new teachers and to provide additional money for supplies and materials are no longer there.
Gutierrez said a lack of competitive salaries for teachers has compounded the problem.
“Our salaries in New Mexico were really not competitive with the surrounding states,” she said. “For a lot of universities that are near the Texas border, like New Mexico State, people will go to El Paso to teach. I think beginning salaries in that area are $47,000.”
Fiscal solutions
According to an Associated Press report, starting salaries for New Mexico public school teachers would rise by $2,000 to $36,000 annually under a budget request submitted Dec. 10, designed to remedy the salary issue.
According to information provided to the school districts by the Public Education Department, a new program will award up to 100 teachers $1,000 for attaining “exemplary” evaluation scores and having significantly higher student achievements.
Funding will also be used to recruit up to 66 students going into the profession, with $15,000 in scholarships, on top of any other scholarships received from the state or institution.
Funding is also being made available by the state for proposals associated with personalized learning, strategic staffing and other student centric strategies.
Local solutions
Gutierrez said District officials have been developing a strategic plan, which will include input from all the faculty, staff and parents who attend parent meetings. One facet of the plan includes all-around recruitment and retention.
Among proposals considered by the District are: the development of competitive stipends for bilingual education, mentoring support and professional development for topics like differentiated instruction and additional training on curriculum writing and lesson plan development for new teachers.
“One of the things that teachers say, is of course pay,” Gutierrez said. “But beyond that, more support for classroom supplies and materials. Everybody also agrees we need more support for common core standards.”