SC teacher vacancies decrease but remain above pre-pandemic levels, report finds
Increases in teacher pay could have helped keep and recruit more teachers, advocates said
BY: SKYLAR LAIRD - NOVEMBER 25, 2024 4:24 PM
COLUMBIA — The number of vacant teaching positions in South Carolina’s K-12 schools has dropped, though it remains far above the number of openings reported before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an annual report released Monday.
It marks the first break in ever-increasing teacher shortages since 2019.
Teachers’ advocates cautioned that the report by the state’s Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement does not give the full picture of the state’s teacher shortage. With 71 of 75 surveyed districts responding, the numbers may not be 100% accurate, said advocates and the state superintendent.
Still, going from more than 1,600 open positions to 1,043 in one year is still a big improvement, advocates and the state Department of Education said Monday. But there’s more work to be done, they added.
“Our goal is nothing less than a great teacher in every classroom,” state Superintendent Ellen Weaver said in a statement.
The number of teacher vacancies fell nearly 37%, from 1,380 last fall to 872 this fall, according to the Supply and Demand Report.
The number of openings for classroom support positions dropped too. Last school year started with 233 vacant positions for librarians, counselors, psychologists and language pathologists. That number was down to 171 this fall, according to surveys conducted in September and October.
“It does look good, and it does look promising,” said South Carolina Education Association Vice President Dena Crews.
However, the number of vacancies is still much higher than districts reported during the fall 2019 semester, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools online. That year, 555 teaching positions were vacant, CERRA reported.
Reports since then kept setting new records in vacancies.
One puzzler to the break in that trend is that districts reported fewer total teaching positions statewide: They wanted 51,400 teachers this school year, compared to 52,800 total slots at the beginning of last school year.
That could come at least in part from fewer districts responding to the survey this year than last year, advocates said.
Or, the decrease in the number of teacher positions could come from districts deciding not to fill open roles. In some cases, those positions could have been funded with federal pandemic aid, which is drying up, the Palmetto State Teachers Association said in an emailed statement.
If that’s the case, “the impact on students could be devastating, especially in core areas for academic success,” the statement said.
Districts had until this fall to designate their share of $3 billion in federal COVID aid but have until 2026 to spend it all.
Because the report doesn’t break down the data by school district, “we just don’t know” the true reason for the decrease, Kathy Maness, president of the teachers’ advocacy group, told the SC Daily Gazette.
“That’s one reason why we need to invest in a more robust data workforce system,” Maness said.
The state Department of Education is working to create a more detailed report, Weaver said in her statement.
“While this report provides an interesting snapshot of South Carolina’s current teacher workforce at an aggregate level, detailed district level data is required for deeper analysis of trends in student enrollment and educator positions; teacher working conditions and exit survey data; and unique subject area, grade level, and geographic needs,” she said.
More detailed data could also give a better idea of why the number of vacancies has dropped, and why some teachers are continuing to leave the profession, advocates said.
An increase in pay likely helped.
Legislators included $200 million in the budget that took effect in July to raise the minimum pay for first-year teachers to $47,000, up from $42,500 last school year. The governor’s goal, which legislators have supported, is to get the base pay to $50,000 by 2026.
Legislators also extended state-paid yearly boosts for experience from 23 years to 28 years in the classroom, something teachers’ advocates have been requesting for years as a way of rewarding the state’s more veteran teachers.
This year’s increases across the teacher salary schedule — which pays teachers according to their experience and degree level — brought the state-paid average to $57,250. Most districts pay more than the state-allowed minimums by adding local property taxes.
Pay isn’t the only factor in keeping and attracting teachers, but it certainly contributes, said education association President Sherry East.
Some teachers who left amid the pandemic’s virtual learning might be returning to their classrooms, East said.
Districts reported that 335 of the teachers newly hired ahead of this semester were returning to the district after a gap of some kind, according to the report.
Other districts may have filled positions with international or virtual teachers. That raised a point of concern for both teachers’ associations, since those teachers may not be the best equipped to teach students’ material, they said.
For instance, some districts contract with companies to livestream lectures to classrooms, but students lack the face-to-face instruction that is best for learning, the Palmetto State Teachers Association said.
“Such classrooms are most likely reported as having a ‘teacher,’ but the quality of instruction falls far short of what students need and deserve,” the association said in a statement.
The Legislature could take plenty more steps to continue reducing the number of vacancies, representatives for the advocacy groups said.
Legislators could revisit a proposal to make professional teaching certificates permanent, reducing the amount of bureaucracy teachers must contend with to renew their certification every five years. Or, they could create more wiggle room in teacher contracts, allowing them to back out after seeing their salaries without losing their teaching certificates, the associations said.
Limits on class sizes could help. So could yearlong, paid student-teaching programs, which would allow prospective teachers to get a better idea of what it takes to be a teacher before running a classroom on their own, East said.
“I don’t want people to think the teaching shortage is over, because it’s not,” East said.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Unlikely Trump can actually eliminate Education Department, experts say
The Trump administration could, however, manage to ‘shrink its footprint,’ says University of South Carolina law professor
BY: SHAUNEEN MIRANDA - NOVEMBER 25, 2024 2:20 PM
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education will be far easier said than done.
As Trump seeks to redefine U.S. education policy, the complex logistics, bipartisan congressional approval and redirection of federal programs required make dismantling the department a challenging — not impossible — feat.
It’s an effort that experts say is unlikely to gain traction in Congress and, if enacted, would create roadblocks for how Trump seeks to implement the rest of his wide-ranging education agenda.
“I struggle to wrap my mind around how you get such a bill through Congress that sort of defunds the agency or eliminates the agency,” Derek Black, an education law and policy expert and law professor at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, told States Newsroom.
Per-pupil spending in SC
FROM SC DAILY GAZETTE
On a statewide average, K-12 traditional school districts will receive nearly $18,900 per student this school year. That does not include charter school districts, which are funded differently.
The expected $905 million in federal aid being distributed statewide represents 7% of districts' total revenue of $13.5 billion, with state taxes and local property taxes funding the rest.
Here’s how the per-child average breaks down by taxing source:
Source: S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office, as of last month's estimates
“What you can see more easily is that maybe you give the agency less money, maybe you shrink its footprint, maybe we’ve got an (Office for Civil Rights) that still enforces all these laws, but instead of however many employees they have now, they have fewer employees,” Black, who directs the school’s Constitutional Law Center, added.
What does the department do?
Education is decentralized in the United States, and the federal Education Department has no say in the curriculum of public schools. Much of the funding and oversight of schools occurs at the state and local levels.
Still, the department has leverage through funding a variety of programs, such as for low-income school districts and special education, as well as administering federal student aid.
Axing the department would require those programs be unwound or assigned to other federal agencies to administer, according to Rachel Perera, a fellow in Governance Studies in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Perera, who studies inequality in K-12 education, expressed concern over whether other departments would get additional resources and staffing to take on significantly more portfolios of work if current Education Department programs were transferred to them.
Sen. Mike Rounds introduced a bill last week that seeks to abolish the department and transfer existing programs to other federal agencies.
In a statement, the South Dakota Republican said “the federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposed a detailed plan on how the department could be dismantled through the reorganization of existing programs to other agencies and the elimination of the programs the project deems “ineffective or duplicative.”
Though Trump has repeatedly disavowed the conservative blueprint, some former members of his administration helped write it.
The agenda also calls for restoring state and local control over education funding, and notes that “as Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.”
Title I, one of the major funding programs the department administers, provides billions of dollars to school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families.
Black pointed to an entire “regulatory regime” that’s built around these funds.
“That regime can’t just disappear unless Title I money also disappears, which could happen, but if you think about Title I money — our rural states, our red states — depend on that money just as much, if not more, than the other states,” he said. “The idea that we would take that money away from those schools — I don’t think there’s any actual political appetite for that.”
‘Inherent logical inconsistencies’
Trump recently tapped Linda McMahon — a co-chair of his transition team, Small Business Administration head during his first term and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO — as his nominee for Education secretary.
If confirmed, she will play a crucial role in carrying out his education plans, which include promoting universal school choice and parental rights, moving education “back to the states” and ending “wokeness” in education.
Trump is threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach “critical race theory,” “gender ideology” or “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” according to his plan.
On the flip side, he wants to boost funding for states and school districts that adhere to certain policy directives.
That list includes districts that: adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice;” get rid of “teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay;” have parents hold the direct elections of school principals; and drastically reduce the number of school administrators.
But basing funding decisions on district-level policy choices would require the kind of federal involvement in education that Trump is pushing against.
Perera described seeing “inherent logical inconsistencies” in Trump’s education plan.
While he is talking about dismantling the department and sending education “back to the states,” he’s “also talking about leveraging the powers of the department to punish school districts for ‘political indoctrination,’” she said.
“He can’t do that if you are unwinding the federal role in K-12 schools,” she said.
Last updated 11:23 a.m., Nov. 25, 2024
Shauneen Miranda is a reporter for States Newsroom’s Washington bureau. An alumna of the University of Maryland, she previously covered breaking news for Axios.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
