TAMPA, Fla. — This week, thousands of kids in the Tampa Bay Area walked into their classrooms for a new school year, yet school districts across the state are still facing teacher shortages.
As a teacher, Letecia Nathan can say she’s had 26 first days of school.
“Especially with teaching kindergarten because you don’t know any of the students, so it’s all brand new to them, they’re brand new to you, and so you’re excited about them coming in, and then their excitement feeds your excitement,” said Nathan.
Even with all that excitement comes challenges, like teacher shortages.
“We actually have two vacancies here at my school,” said Nathan. “We are fortunate enough that we do have some long-term subs that actually have teaching experience in the classrooms.”
Nathan explained the ripple effect of what shortages mean for teachers currently in the classroom.
“If they’re fortunate enough to get long-term subs, they still have to plan and help those subs out because they’re not teachers, and then unfortunately, there are schools where there is no long-term sub, and so those teachers have to take those students, and so they may be overcrowded in their classrooms because there’s no one else to take the students,” said Nathan.
Just this week, the Florida Education Association said that students in the state started off the school year facing almost 10,000 teacher and education staff professional vacancies.
Heat Map of teacher vacancies in the Tampa Bay area
“We fund public education and teacher salaries 50th in the nation, so that’s a Florida problem,” said Rob Kriete, the President of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association.
Kriete explained how shortages impact students and teachers.
“Every student deserves to have a favorite teacher,” said Kriete. “We have thousands of kids that don’t have that classroom teacher in front of them, that experience that one-on-one, that help, that bond that you create in the classroom. The other part is our teachers that we have here are covering classes every day, and that really pulls their bandwidth away from their own students. Teachers are working harder than ever before.”
Despite the challenges teachers face, Nathan said you can expect them to give 120 percent for their students day in and day out.
“Whether we have a regular class or whether we have too many kids in our class, we’re still going to just work as hard as we can,” said Nathan.
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