Colquitt County Schools face teacher shortage head-on

Published 5:15 pm Thursday, March 2, 2023

MOULTRIE — Colquitt County School District is one of several school systems across the country experiencing long-lasting effects from the national teacher shortage.

A multi-part report from CNHI News called “Leaving the Classroom,” examines the national teacher shortage as reported by agencies tracking those numbers and explores the reasons why teachers say they have left the profession or are considering a career change.

Colquitt County School District leaders spoke with The Observer about its experiences.

“Every school district in the country, in the state, and locally is struggling with teacher recruitment and teacher retention. It is not unique to Colquitt County, and it’s not unique to the state of Georgia,” Superintendent Ben Wiggins said.

In 2021, the CCSD had more than 100 new hires at the New Teacher Orientation, Wiggins said. The district hired 99 new teachers for the 2022-23 academic year and 35 of those were first-year teachers, according James Harrell, the assistant superintendent of human resources.

The shortage is not only affecting the education field but all workforce areas. Wiggins deems a reason for the education shortage is due to more teachers retiring and fewer students majoring in education.

Improvement Plans

While planning how to improve its recruitment and retention rates, he CCSD considered the following: How to make the district a truly valuable option for teachers looking to enter the profession as first-year teachers and for teachers working in neighboring districts that may be interested in crossing the county line? What could the district do to make its current faculty and staff want to stay in Colquitt County and teach in our district?

The district’s improvement plan included upgrading employees’ local supplements and adding additional supplemental benefits.

“We did a study and we looked at all the surrounding school districts because we wanted to make sure that our local supplements were at least equal to, if not greater than all of our neighbors,” he said. “The second thing we did is we looked at our supplemental benefits, and we wanted to make sure that we were offering our employees the best possible option out there when it comes to supplemental benefits.”

Its employee assistance programs began in 2021 and offer an increased benefit package including approximately 10 free confidential counseling sessions per calendar year for the employee, their spouse and dependents through Colquitt Regional Medical Center Social Services and Psychiatry Program or Prudential Health. The district’s provider – Totem Solutions – offers other free services like legal advice and estate planning.

The improvement plan also implemented a retirement match program allowing the district to match up to 6% of an employee’s retirement contribution. The total district participation was 88% as of Feb. 24. The participation rate was lower than 50% prior to the match program adoption.

Packing the Teacher Profession

The CCSD is influencing students at Colquitt County High School to enter the education progression with its early childhood CTAE – Career, Technical and Agricultural Education – pathway.

“Each year we have a big signing ceremony with them. What we really want to do is make sure that they know from a district perspective, not only are we incredibly proud that they have chosen to answer the call to teach, but we also tell them at that ceremony, that if you go to college and you graduate with a teaching certificate, we guarantee you a teaching job in our district,” Wiggins said.

CCSD Chief Communications Officer Angela Hobby said the district added the signing as an additional incentive for students to choose that pathway.

Wiggins said CCHS Principal Dan Chappuis is looking to start a new pathway called, “Teaching as a Profession,” for students interested in teaching in middle grades and high school.

The early childhood education pathway focuses on working in a daycare center, head start or pre-k program.

“The Teaching as a Profession pathway is for somebody who knows that they want to be a middle or an elementary education teacher to go into high school education. They want to do the four-year path right out of high school. It focuses a little bit more on curriculum and pedagogy that a teacher would get in true teacher certification,” Hobby said.

The district also currently pays for early childhood pathway students to take the certification test with the state of Georgia through Southern Regional Technical College, which would allow them to start as a paraprofessional right after high school.

Wiggins explained the number of job openings will begin to increase from now to the end of the school year due to teachers retiring or leaving for family reasons.

“There are roughly [about] 1400 employees in the school district,” Hobby said. “There is a myriad of reasons why somebody might leave a position that has nothing to do with happiness in that position. They can have a family member that they have to go take care of, they can have the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom for a certain number of years or their spouse might get transferred, and they might not have a choice.”

She said focusing on the number of openings last year versus the current year is not an accurate reflection of a teacher retention issue.

“I think that, in general, looking at the number who stay longevity wise in the teaching [field] period, like whether they stay with us or they moved to another district, that’s the bigger thing is are they staying as an educator in general,” Hobby explained.

Teacher Burnout and Teacher Voice

In June 2022, the University of Georgia released a report from a state task force, that discussed factors contributing to teacher burnout, called, “Teacher Burnout in Georgia: Voices from the Classroom.” One key factor was the lack of a teacher’s voice.

Wiggins said local teachers were active and hands-on in the process of choosing a new reading curriculum. They were even able to cast a vote on the instruction.

“When we went through the process to choose a new reading curriculum, we purposefully spent an entire year going through that process, so that the teachers at the school level were able to check out those curriculums,” he said.

Wiggins also regularly meets and receives feedback from a teacher advisory committee that represents all the schools within the district. Once he receives feedback, he discusses the comments with the district administrative staff.

The report also highlighted that teachers endure unrealistic pressures and expectations. This feeling is sometimes caused by the extra time teachers spend working outside of the regular school day.

“At some point, our country and our state, and locally, we’ve got to come back to a place to where we used to really revere and honor teachers,” Wiggins explained. “We have not been perfect across the country either as educators, but think we need to do a better job of that. We’ve got to make sure that everybody understands how difficult it is to teach and how important it is.”

For more information on the Colquitt County School District, please visit their website https://www.colquitt.k12.ga.us/.