Whether a mid-career changer who has always wanted to be a public educator or a 22-year-old account- ing graduate whose true passion is helping students, these individuals usually jump into the fellowship as a year of self-exploration. Many fellows say, “I’ve always wanted to get into education or give back to my com- munity.” Although we always have a few who leave after the first year, many others discover that this is what they want to do with the rest of their lives. We invest heavily in this group, even if their pathway to certification is much longer. By the end of the year, most are ready to get a master’s degree or work toward certification, but programs and certifications cost time and resources. Many of our fellows can’t do that, so we’re always trying to figure out how to build that path- way in partnership with the colleges and universities in our state.
What Is Next?
During the past five years, we’ve moved 20 fellows—just under 10% of our entire teaching force—into full-time positions here at Central Falls. Others have taken posi- tions in other districts. This year, we hired as full-time teachers four former fellows who’d left us for at least a year. When you look at the bottom of our seniority lists, they’re almost all former fellows.
Although the fellowship has served us well in ensur- ing quality instruction and a pipeline of high-quality, diverse educators, it’s not enough. We’ve all experienced the struggles of hiring and retention in education exacer- bated by the pandemic. At Central Falls, we’ve done a good job in our schools because of our fellowship program, but it must be taken to a whole new level, to include policymakers, fiscal decision makers at the state level, and the rest of us, all invested in a regionalized way. We must think creatively about bringing as much talent into education as possible. We can’t wait for edu- cation schools to graduate an inadequate number of candidates. We must encourage kids as early as middle school to go into public education.
And we have to look outside schools of education,
too. This is about talent, not certificates. It’s about leav- ing a lasting impact on students, the school, and the community, not just filling positions. We talk about how we must diversify the teacher pipeline and how we need to acquire more bilingual and trilingual people who rep- resent the community, but considering all of the barriers in place, we’re often excluding the very people we need. If we are really going to address the talent problem in public education, we all, together, must figure out how to get qualified individuals who aren’t from the traditional
10 APRIL 2022 | SCHOOL BUSINESS AFFAIRS
pathway into the classroom. After all, no substitutions should be allowed when it comes to educating our future leaders!
Jason Midwood is chief of human capital for Central Falls School District in Rhode Island. Email: midwoodj@cfschools. net; Twitter: @JayMidwood. An expanded version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of SchoolCEO magazine.
ADDRESSING STAFFING SHORTAGES
ollowing are some additional resources on the extent of education staffing shortages and some of their impacts on teaching and learning.
F
A National Education Association (NEA) survey indicates more than half of educators are think- ing about leaving the profession earlier than they had planned, with higher rates among Black and Hispanic/Latino educators. There are 600,000 fewer educators in public education today than before the pandemic two years ago.
www.nea.org/ sites/default/files/2022-02/NEA%20Member%20 COVID-19%20Survey%20Summary.pdf.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) School Pulse data from January 2022, along with additional data, indicate 44% of public schools reported at least one staffing vacancy, with 45% of those reporting vacancies for special education teachers. More than 50% of the teach- ing or staff vacancies were due to resignations.
https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp.
The Learning Policy Institute published several reports on the topic of teacher shortages. You can read more on the Learning Policy Institute blog at
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog or in their Learning Policy Institute Briefs: Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It (
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/ product/teacher-turnover-brief) and Diversifying the Teaching Profession Through High-Retention Pathways (
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/ product/diversifying-teaching-profession-brief)
The Afterschool Alliance report “Where Did All the Afterschool Staff Go?” shows that finding and maintaining staff are top concerns among afterschool providers, with close to 50% report- ing it has been difficult to attract or maintain staff as waitlists for services continue to grow. http://
afterschoolalliance.org/documents/Afterschool- COVID-19-Wave-6-Brief.pdf.
asbointl.org
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