Teacher Vacancies Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Addressing The Teacher Shortage In West Virginia

As a new school year begins West Virginia continues to struggle with certified teacher vacancies, but educational leaders are working to change that.

Caitlin Nelson knew from a very young age that she wanted to be a teacher.

“I knew as a ninth grader that I wanted to be a special educator,” she said.

Now she’s living that reality as a K through 5 autism teacher in Raleigh County. But looking around at the changes the state has made in recent years to help people become educators, Nelson can’t help but wish her path had been laid out as smoothly.

“I would have loved to have the opportunity to not have to worry about debt and do what I love,” she said. “I also like the aspect of starting it in high school. If I would have had that opportunity, I would have achieved so much more years before I actually started achieving.”

Facing a teacher shortage that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Virginia has begun implementing several changes to get more certified teachers into classrooms.

Earlier this year, House Bill 3035 created the Third Grade Success Act which will bring paraprofessionals into first grade classrooms this fall. A paraprofessional is a teaching-related position within a school responsible for concentrated assistance for students. Under the Third Grade Success Act, these educators will try to address reading and math skills early-on. Literacy and numeracy paraprofessionals will also be added to second and third grade classrooms in the coming years.

But, in a work pool spread so thin, the new paraprofessional positions have already started to draw existing teachers away from special education.

“It is really discouraging as a special education teacher to see people don’t really have the desire for special education,” Nelson said. ‘If I need a sub, I hardly ever get a sub unless I’m personally friends with them. It’s not something people just pick up on the hotline.”

Paraprofessionals will play an important role in the state’s educational future, but teachers continue to be the backbone of the system. And despite alternative pathways, many still get into teaching through a traditional university program.

Teresa Eagle, dean of the School of Education at Marshall University, said today’s recruitment problem is nothing new.

“Enrollment in educator preparation programs, which is what we call teacher ed, across the country has been down drastically, not just recently, but for the last 10 to 15 years,” she said.

Eagle said enrollment is starting to trend back up, but still not where they need to be. In the last few years, she has noticed a change in her students. They’re as passionate as ever, but more and more candidates are moving away from the profession.

In the past, Eagle said education was almost a family business, with children following their parents into the profession. These days, however, people are more likely to steer their children away from teaching due to the low pay as well as increasing difficulty and decreasing respect for the profession.

But the state is trying to make it easier than ever for those who took a detour from education to get certified and into a classroom. Passed in 2021, Senate Bill 14 created alternative pathways to allow people who already have a bachelor’s degree to receive a Professional Teaching Certificate.

“What I’m seeing is people in that program are people who knew they wanted to teach but they allowed parents, family, whatever, to guide them in a different direction for things other than the passion for teaching,” she said. “Now they’ve decided, that’s really what I wanted to do in the first place.”

Autumn Cyprès, dean of West Virginia University’s College of Applied Human Sciences, recognizes the pressing need for alternatives, but urges caution as well as respect for the teaching profession.

“There is an assumption made with the field of education,” Cyprès said. “Everybody went through school. So it’s really easy to jump and say, ‘Well, I went through a school so now I know what it means to be a teacher.’ You have no idea. Just because you went to school doesn’t mean that you understand or are going to be good at being a teacher.”

Cyprès said the demands being made of teachers are not new, but rather are now more formalized which allow programs like the one at WVU to better prepare teachers for the needs and demands of modern students.

“Education is a profession. It is one that is not paid enough in my view, but throwing more money at education isn’t going to be the answer,” she said. “Thinking more deeply about the nuances of education and where the purpose of school bleeds into very deep societal issues in our democracy, of equity, of health care, access to social supports, all of that feeds into the challenges that a teacher needs to face.”

Cyprès said part of the issue facing education is how to help someone understand their level of commitment to the profession. She believes one way is to talk to people who are starting to realize they might like education.

That’s exactly what Carla Warren, the officer of academic support and educator development for the West Virginia Department of Education, has been working to do. She is overseeing the launch of the state’s Grow Your Own initiative which gives students a fast-track into the education field through a combination of dual enrollment/Advanced Placement courses and an accelerated pathway.

“We are entering this first year of full implementation carrying about 177 students over from the pilot year with several students graduated,” Warren said. “So we’re pulling about 177 students forward, and we will begin building from there.”

On top of getting students to commit to the teaching profession early, Warren is taking advantage of the recent action of the U.S. Department of Labor to recognize teaching as a registered apprenticeship.

“When we started, West Virginia was the second state behind Tennessee to register the teaching occupation, as a registered apprenticeship,” she said. “It provides us the opportunity to access workforce dollars that we can use to reach that vision of removing those barriers of cost and providing those wraparound services for students.”

While Grow Your Own is an ambitious solution, it will take at least three years to pay out in any meaningful way. Warren said that in the short-term, the state is looking at paraprofessionals to fill the gaps.

“They’re traditionally individuals who wanted to become a teacher at some point, but life put a barrier up,” she said. “We found that that population, they’re already invested in school, they already know what a school system looks like. They want to be a part of that community. And so we feel like that really is a population that is ripe for the picking to create some very high-quality teachers.”

The potential payoff for Grow Your Own and the Third Grade Success Act is years away. But Dean Eagle renews her hope for the future of teaching each May when her students graduate.

“What I do every year when we graduate students is I watch the students cross the stage, and try to pick out the ones that I’m the proudest of, the ones that I know will go out and do a fabulous job and represent us well, be the critical changemakers in their schools and for their students,” she said. “So far, every year, I’ve been able to identify quite a few students like that. And so that’s where I get my positive outlook, that as long as we keep finding these people and putting them out there, then I know that it’s good for the future. It’s good for kids. The problem, of course, is we need more people like that.”
This story is part of the series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

State Superintendent Discusses New Position, Goals

Earlier this month, Michele Blatt became the West Virginia superintendent of schools following the retirement of David Roach in June. She is the third person to hold the position in less than two years. Chris Schulz caught up with the superintendent at the INVEST Conference in Morgantown earlier this week to discuss her new position.

Education Reporter Chris Schulz caught up with the superintendent at the INVEST Conference in Morgantown earlier this week to discuss her new position.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Schulz: Superintendent, first of all, tell me, how are you feeling?

Blatt: I’m really excited about this opportunity to lead our state, and so grateful to the [West Virginia] Board of Education that put their faith in me to do this job. I have an amazing support system at the department and around the state that I know together, we’re gonna do some really great things.

Schulz: Can you tell me a little bit about what it is that you’re doing here in Morgantown?

Blatt: This is our second statewide conference that we’ve held, called INVEST. It is to begin the implementation of House Bill 3035, the Third Grade Success Act, to start training our teachers and principals on the implementation of the Science of Reading components. And also start with the Unite with Numeracy work around the math skills and things so that our students can be successful by the time they leave third grade.

Schulz: How is the implementation of the Third Grade Success Act going, and how does it feel to now be at the helm?

Blatt: We’ve got a great plan in place. Like I said, this is our second statewide conference, so we’ll have hit approximately 1,200 teachers and principals this summer. We also have a wonderful plan in place to do implementation teams across the state. We’ll be starting in August and September, going out and training county teams that can then work with each of their schools. And then we’ll also be able to provide the support and follow-up. So it’s always been important to me that the department’s seen as a support place, and that they can provide the resources and things that our teachers need so that they can reach the students.

Schulz: The issue of staffing has come up. I don’t remember the number off the top of my head of how many paraprofessionals are supposed to be coming into first grade classrooms this year alone, to say nothing of second or third grade in the coming years. But how is the department addressing that right now?

Blatt: We put out some guidance early on as to the different options and things that were available, and the [state] legislature gave us some flexibility. They could hire early childhood classroom assistants, aides, paraprofessionals, or interventionists, because we knew that would be an issue. But in a call last week with superintendents, we learned that they’re not having trouble filling those positions, but they’re losing all their special education aides. So that’s where, in some conversations with the legislature and other things, we’re gonna have to really start figuring out how to meet that need as well.

Schulz: More broadly, you know West Virginia is still dealing with over 1,000 vacancies in certified teaching positions. Now that you are leading the department, now that you’re leading education in the state, do you have any plans or working on anything to try and address that issue?

Blatt: Well, we have a lot of programs in place that just started in the last year or so. We have Grow Your Own teaching pathway, and that is also starting to incorporate the pathway for aides and our high school students to come out and meet that demand. So we’re doing a lot of work with our universities, doing a lot of alternative certification pathways, so that we can make sure that we’re doing all we can from the state level to recruit and retain our teachers.

Schulz: One of the concerns when we hear about alternative educational pathways is that foundation of the profession of teaching. I know that you have a very long career in education. What can you say to that, and what are you seeing in these alternative programs that makes you confident that these people are going to be ready to teach in the same way as a traditionally trained teacher?

Blatt: Well, there are several different pathways, whether it’s from the state level programs that our university or counties are allowed to have their own. Part of that is they’ve already received the content based on the career, something they’re coming from. But there’s various ways that depending on which program they select, they do receive the pedagogy and some of the classroom management and behavioral skills that they need to operate in the classroom.

Schulz: What are you most excited to be working on right now?

Blatt: I think just making sure that our teachers in our schools [and] our staff have the resources they need to meet the needs of our children. We focus a lot on academics, and that’s the most important thing, to make sure that we can get our kids ready to read and do math by third grade, but we have so many children across this state that their basic needs aren’t met.

And making sure that we’re putting supports in place to help our teachers so that they can be able to teach our students, and making sure that everyone understands that for some of our students, schools are the only place that they feel safe and loved, and get two or three meals a day.

Schulz: Can you tell me a little bit more how that will be happening? I know that your predecessor was talking a lot about expanding Communities in Schools, for example.

Blatt: We’ll be in 52 counties this fall for Communities in Schools. We also have many other projects in place through different programs, working with our counselors and things. Communities in Schools has made an impact across the state because it has put a site coordinator in every school to focus on those basic needs, and then allow them to free the teacher up to actually focus on the academic side of it. There’s a shortage of those, of counselors and behavioral specialists and things as well, but there’s several different grants and things that we’ve worked on with different agencies to really address that need as well.

Schulz: I’m curious if you can help our listeners a little bit to understand the differentiation between deputy superintendent and superintendent. What has been the biggest change for you so far?

Blatt: I think the biggest change is just the realization that I’m the one that’s responsible for all of our schools, and making sure that everything that we do is going to meet the needs of our students, going to get them where they need to be academically. And that there’s just a lot of opportunities, but it’s a little scary at times to think about that. All of those schools and everything are depending on me. But again, I just continue to think about the great staff we have at the department and then across the state and those that are willing to do what it takes to meet the needs of our students.

Schulz: I know that one of the topics that came up at the last [state] Board of Education meeting was the two current special investigations into school systems. What really struck me was this discussion about implementing new procedures for maybe catching these issues early. Is that something that you’ve been working on?

Blatt: Yes, we’re really looking to see what we can do proactively to catch some of those issues that we found. Each office at the department is in charge of a certain section of those county effectiveness indicators. And they’re looking to see how they can tighten those up or strengthen those to catch some of those situations earlier.

Schulz: Could you tell me a little bit about that conversation that you had with the superintendents in the state last week?

Blatt: It was a matter of looking at all the requirements and things that are out there. We talked a lot about the professional development that’s required, or the required trainings and things that are required either in state or federal code or policy, and really trying to think about how can we make sure that we have enough time with our teachers and staff, to really train them on the things that they need, and provide them what they need to be successful, especially as we implement this Ready Read Write initiative.

Schulz: As a career educator, do you have any thoughts on how much is being asked of our educators these days?

Blatt: There’s an immense amount of work being asked of our educators, of aids. As I mentioned earlier, so many of them are responsible for taking care of these kids. We have over 7,000 kids in foster care that aren’t getting their basic needs met. So when you think our teachers are no longer just responsible for teaching, reading, writing and math, they’re also responsible for teaching these kids a lot of times how to behave in the classroom, providing them with clothes, providing them with extra resources on the weekend, so that they have food on the weekends. And in so many cases, our teachers are not only teachers, but their counselors and nurses and so many other things for the students in their classroom.

Schulz: You are, by my account, the third superintendent that the state has had in as many years, maybe less. And I just wonder, how does that impact your outlook on the position and what you hope to accomplish?

Blatt: We’ve had a lot of turnover over the last several years in superintendents. One of the things that I think a lot about is, what can I do to kind of study the system? There’s no way we can continue to meet the demands that the communities and the legislature and the governor and others have for us if there’s a constant turnover in leadership, and we’ve had a lot of that turnover. So one of the things I think about is, what can we do to all work together and keep everyone moving in the right direction for our kids and do it for the long-term?

Efforts To Bring Retired Teachers Back Sees Some Success, But Many Positions Still Unfilled

Lawmakers received an update Sunday on an initiative that brings retired personnel back into schools to relieve staff shortages.

Deputy State Superintendent Michele Blatt gave the Joint Committee on Pensions and Retirement an update on the logistics of the program, and how many teachers have come back as long-term substitutes to address “critical need and shortage areas.”

“We’re basically looking at any teacher that desires to work more than 140 days in a fiscal year, [and there’s] a process that code explains has to take place in order for that to happen,” Blatt said.

For a retired teacher to receive critical need status for any given position, there cannot be any existing teacher or applicant locally that is already fully certified for the position, per state code.

Blatt said 248 requests were submitted this school year for retirees to come back and teach as long-term substitutes. The majority of requests received were in special education and elementary education. That accounts for about 20 percent of the current vacancies.

Out of West Virginia’s 55 counties, 45 submitted policies to the state Board of Education this year outlining areas of critical need. That includes positions at the state’s Schools for Diversion and Transition and Schools for the Deaf and Blind. There are currently more than 1,200 vacancies for fully certified teachers statewide.

House Bill 2346 was also passed last session, which similarly addresses the statewide bus driver shortage. That piece of legislation goes into effect July 1.

According to state code, the current legislation that allows retired personnel to be brought in as long-term substitute teachers, speech pathologists, school nurses and school counselors, expires June 30, 2025.

Senate Education Advances Bill To Raise New Teacher Pay

Senate Bill 204 would raise the base pay for teachers with less than eight years of experience. Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, said attracting new teachers with competitive pay is the state’s best bet at filling vacancies.

West Virginia has close to 1,500 vacancies for certified teachers in its schools, more than double the vacancies it had just a few years ago.

That’s according to Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan. He is the lead sponsor of Senate Bill 204, which would raise the base pay for teachers with less than eight years of experience. Trump said attracting new teachers with competitive pay is the state’s best bet at filling the vacancies.

“It’s not going to be easier or affordable ever for West Virginia to create a salary schedule that draws a teacher with 10 or 15 years of experience in Maryland or Virginia or Pennsylvania to come to West Virginia. It would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars,” Trump said.

Trump estimated the cost of his new teacher pay increase to be around $24 million.

“That’s the point of this bill,” he said. “I thought if we could at least goose the starting pay for teachers up to where the pay is comparable to teachers who have been teaching and have eight years of experience, that might help, it might help us being able to chip away at some of this vacancy problem.”

Trump called the situation in the Eastern Panhandle, where schools must compete with Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and to a certain extent Washington, D.C. for teachers, an “arms race.” Starting pay in Maryland is on average more than $10,000 higher than pay for the same position in West Virginia.

West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee confirmed that West Virginia’s average starting salary for teachers is $37,987, 40th in the nation. For comparison, Maryland’s average of $48,510 ranked seventh in the nation while Virginia’s starting salary for teachers of $42,251 was 18th in the nation and Ohio’s $38,231 average was 37th.

Of the regional states discussed during the meeting, West Virginia’s average pay only outranked Kentucky’s at $37,373, 44th in the nation.

Lee raised the issue of the message the bill would send to existing, veteran teachers.

“My concern with that is you have a brand new teacher coming in, and a teacher has been there eight years and the second year they’re teaching there, that beginning teachers second year, and that eighth year teachers ninth year, they’re still on the same scale and will be that way from that point on,” Lee said. “You’re eliminating eight years of increment raises for those educators.”

After the Senate’s Floor session, Trump reiterated that the bill aims to address certified teacher shortages in the most efficient way possible. He said there is no intention to offend experienced teachers, who he concedes are also underpaid.

“There has been some consideration of general pay raise increase bills, and I’m supportive of those,” Trump said. “My hope was that this bill would sort of front load some of that attack to allow us to compete a little more aggressively for newly minted teachers. There are other problems and that is apparently, fewer and fewer college kids are choosing education as their primary area of study and I think we would be wise to examine things that would maybe change that.”

Trump said he is open to considering any ideas that may help with the staffing shortages in the state’s schools.

Senate Bill 204 now goes to the Senate Finance Committee for their consideration. Trump said he believes the Finance Committee will begin work on several educational bills this week when budgetary presentations conclude.

“It is, number one, a constitutional responsibility of the legislature to provide for a thorough and efficient public education for our children,” Trump said. “Number two, it’s critically important to our future. I think everybody here agrees that the future of this state, in large degree, is dependent upon our ability to provide strong, sound public education for our children, and it’s a priority of mine and, I think for all my colleagues in both houses of the Legislature.”

House Bill Would Require County School Districts To Post Job Openings In One Place

West Virginia could soon have a statewide database that lists all teacher vacancies in the state’s 55 county school districts.

The Senate on Monday unanimously approved House Bill 4489, which will require all county school districts to post open positions on a statewide job bank.

The bill has bipartisan sponsorship and comes at a time when West Virginia is experiencing a staffing shortage of about 1,000 teachers. Pre-pandemic, that number was closer to 700.

Right now, it’s optional for counties to post their job vacancies to the West Virginia Department of Education’s website. This bill would require county boards of education to share their vacancies so that all job openings can be found in one place.

The bill now heads back to the House of Delegates. If the House approves the Senate’s changes to the bill, it will head to Gov. Jim Justice for a signature.

The state has reported that West Virginia has five areas of critical need: math, science, special education, elementary education and counseling.

A Breakdown In COVID-19 Relief Funding For W.Va. Schools

When Congress passed the CARES Act earlier this summer to help Americans navigate the toll from the coronavirus pandemic, West Virginia received more than $1 billion.

Of that figure, $86.6 million was put into a fund called the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSERF). That fund was spent two ways: $78 million was dispersed to all 55 county school districts, divvied up based on the number of low-income students in each district. And $8.6 million was withheld by the West Virginia Department of Education to be used for emergencies related to COVID-19.

In the weeks leading up to schools reopening, the West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers and other groups have criticized state officials’ handling of school reopening and voiced concerns that schools across the state have not received enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and other resources to combat the virus.

This week, the West Virginia Board of Education held its first meeting since schools in the state reopened for the 2020-2021 school year. Fred Albert, president of the AFT-WV, again addressed these concerns.

“I know it’s not been easy,” Albert said. “We’re still getting calls every day from concerned parents and concerned teachers, concerned service personnel that they don’t feel quite equipped.”

Albert brought up technology and connectivity issues, teacher vacancies and concerns about the safety of some of the cleaning products being used at schools.

Melanie Perkey, executive director of the Office of Federal Programs under the WVDE, addressed some of his concerns, sharing with board members a breakdown about some additional re-entry dollars for West Virginia’s school districts.

The WVDE took the withheld $8.6 million from the CARES Act and combined it with state funds from school-related activities that were canceled due to the coronavirus – totaling an additional $12.5 million that was awarded to 48 county school districts across the state.

“We conducted a competitive grant process where counties could apply for special projects that they wanted to do related to their COVID-19 response,” Perkey told board members. “And they had to apply in three areas of priority.”

Those areas included social and emotional needs, technology, and achievement gaps.

“More than half of the funding was spent on technology for remote learning,” Perkey said, speaking to the original ESSERF appropriation. “[Schools] purchased devices. They purchased software for learning management systems, and that type of thing. [The funding] could be used for sanitation, cleaning, training of staff, food preparation.”

Now, with the additional $12.5 million, Perkey said they are seeing the majority of counties use this funding on technology needs again.

The seven counties that did not receive additional funding through the competitive grant either did not apply for it or applied but still had funding available from a previous fiscal year, she said.

“We had three counties [Gilmer, Lincoln and Roane counties] that applied but did not receive funding,” Perkey said. “With the extension that the CARES Act allowed on fiscal year 2019 money, it doesn’t expire in September, they have another year.”

She explained that those three counties still had unused funds available from fiscal year 2019 and 2020 because of the federal extension, so her staff didn’t think those counties needed the extra money from the competitive grant.

Perkey said school districts will have until 2022 to use all funds.

In total, school districts in West Virginia are receiving more than $90 million in COVID-19 relief from both the CARES Act and from the WVDE’s competitive grant combined.

The WVDE’s website features a graph that breaks down what percentage of the ESSERF funds were used for things like technology or sanitation products as well as the amount of funding each county received.

The department’s website also features a document breaking down how much and which counties received funding from the competitive grant allocation.

Also, in this board meeting, members approved a waiver request from counties seeking to fill teacher vacancies with substitute teachers in critical areas of need.

Those counties include Boone, Hampshire, Lincoln, Logan, Monongalia, Morgan, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Ritchie, Wetzel, and Wyoming County Schools, and the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.