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Amid scrambles for teachers, some fear worse shortages ahead

Shortages are being felt much more widely due to absences during a pandemic that is testing educators like no other stretch of their careers.

Credit: Associated Press/Matt Rourke

Kerry Mulvihill, a science teacher at Gerald Huesken Middle School poses for a portrait in Lancaster, Pa., Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. Mulvihill said only five people applied for an 8th-grade science position this fall and none of them made it to the interview stage. Two special education teachers recently resigned in the middle of the year, a formerly rare occurrence during her 25 years as a teacher, she said. “We really have a crisis,” Mulvihill said. “Now, I’m like, oh my golly. I’m begging people, hold in, hold in, we need quality people, for sure. We can’t all retire at the same time.”

PENNSYLVANIA, USA — U.S. school administrators dealing with pandemic-driven teacher shortages are getting creative to keep their classrooms staffed.

But some experts are warning there are longer-term problems with the teacher pipeline that cannot be solved with emergency substitutes, bonuses and loosened qualifications.

Shortages are being felt much more widely due to absences during a pandemic that is testing educators like no other stretch of their careers, raising fears of many more leaving the profession.

To address the problem, states are raising salaries, seeking more teachers outside formal training programs, and pursuing other strategies to develop more educators.

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