He would come home from school, set up a makeshift classroom in his living room and go over what he learned that day with his grandmother. However, recent staffing shortages and subsequent stressors felt by teachers—such as those he saw firsthand through his experience as a student teacher—have deterred him from pursuing a career in education.
“When I started student teaching, I had an open mind, [thinking] I’ll probably get a job because there are so many vacancies. I think about a month in ... I didn’t say ‘I’m never going to go into teaching,’ but I definitely realized I needed to take a step back,” Mayland said.
Local school districts, including Hays CISD, have felt the strain of COVID-19 case spikes and staffing shortages over the past few months, with January being especially challenging.
Following the winter break, HCISD officials posted to Facebook and sent an email to parents announcing that it was hiring certified and noncertified guest teachers to substitute and asked parents to consider applying.
It was an all hands-on-deck situation, HCISD Chief Communication Officer Tim Savoy said.
“Everybody who can sub in a classroom, if their schedule permits, we were bringing them in from central office,” Savoy said. “If you have a second grade classroom and you’ve got someone in there who’s a sub and they’re not experienced at it, all those other second grade teachers are going to be there to help them out because they’re going to be so incredibly grateful that they’ve come in to watch that class and to help them.”
Absences go unfilled
Cases among students and teachers rocketed following an Omicron variant surge, creating some of the highest unfilled absence rates in recent years. “You just knew that if you were absent, there was a very good chance that that was going to fall on your fellow teachers to fill the gap,” Wallace Middle School seventh and eighth grade teacher James Noble said. During the 2021-22 school year through February, HCISD recorded more than 1,500 cases than it tallied in the previous full two school years.
During this stretch of spiking cases and absences, campuses were pulling any and all staff and placing them in classrooms that needed it.
“The kids roll with it a lot better than the adults do. The teachers are the ones who are stressing and dealing with five more kids in their classroom,” Tom Green Elementary School substitute Angelo Florez said.
To help fill the gaps, the 30 hours of college credit required to be a substitute teacher could be waived if the principal of the school recommended a parent to the role, which Savoy said was not ideal but only a temporary measure.
“The kids generally just miss out on learning opportunities when there’s not a fully certified teacher [in the room] who’s been planning everything for months,” Noble said.
The situation in HCISD only underscored the national issue plaguing classrooms across the country.A study conducted by the Charles Butt Foundation found that the number of teachers seriously considering leaving the profession increased by 10% from 2020 to 2021, and Noble is one of them. The middle school teacher—in his eighth year in the profession—said it will be his last.
Losing interest
Noble has been planning to leave his position since last summer as the job has become increasingly difficult.
High levels of work-related stress, excessive workload and feeling undervalued were only a few of the reasons teachers cited for their considering of leaving the profession, according to the study by the Charles Butt Foundation.
“Being a teacher is an incredibly difficult job—it has been for a long time. It’s continued to get harder and the last two years have been really stressful,” Noble said. “I wouldn’t list COVID[-19] as my reason, but it’s just one more strain on a system where teachers are constantly asked to do more with no additional resources.”
The district has been doing what it can in terms of wages, Noble said, but he understands that they have limited financial resources.
HCISD’s 2020-2021 budget shows that about 70% of total expenditures are payroll related.
HCISD base pay for teachers entering the workforce is lower than the statewide average of just over $54,000. The salary is just one more reason Noble has decided to leave education for good.
“There’s only so much money. Being a teacher requires a lot of skills, and it’s hard to keep extremely skilled people in a job where there’s not a lot of opportunity to grow—-financially anyway,” Noble said.
He is not the only one being deterred from the education field.
Mayland, who graduated from Texas State University’s College of Education in December, began student teaching in the fall at a school in New Braunfels ISD that was very short staffed, he said.
What he thought would be a great experience that would lead to a full- time career after graduation became a tough pill to swallow, he said.
“There were times where, if a teacher got sick, they’d bring the two classrooms into the computer lab and they would have [around] 60 kids with one teacher,” Mayland said. “I was burned out because you couldn’t take a day off, there was nobody to cover you, there were no [substitute teachers].”
He also recalls a time when his coordinating teacher had to take her child to a doctor’s appointment. The principal said that if she could not find coverage for the day, she would not be able to go. “I remember she was so stressed out. ... She would break down and [say], ‘It’s not a bad job. It’s just a tough time right now,’” Mayland said.
Toward the end of his time as a student teacher, he felt as though the right move was to take a step back from education, but he attended a job fair wondering if he would meet someone who could change his mind.
“It was almost like walking into a sea of sharks,” Mayland said.
Despite receiving a few job offers, he knew it would not be the right move for him.
Mayland’s experience points to a larger issue across the county, as documented by Raise Your Hand Texas, a public advocacy group, in its 2021 Texas Teacher Workforce Report.
Its study found that the number of prospective teachers earning their teaching certification decreased by 20.07% from 2010-19. Despite the stressful time student teaching, learning the realities of being a teacher during a shortage and how that can affect a work-life balance, Mayland said that he hopes to return to teaching at some point, just not now.
In his heart, Mayland said he would like to go back to teaching at a later date, but his time as a student teacher and experiencing the staffing shortage has pushed his career in education onto the back burner.
Combatting the losses
At a board meeting March 28, the HCISD board of trustees approved a payment of $137,775 for 20 spots in the Texas Teachers of Tomorrow: Lighthouse Teacher Certification and Preparation Program and other related fees to help combat the compounding strain of teacher vacancies and rapid growth the district has been experiencing.
The program is only offered to a handful of districts and is a customized “grow your own approach to support [HCISD] staffing needs,” according to the program documents.
The program has about a 92% pass rate that will hopefully “stop the bleeding” within the district and fill the vacancies for the upcoming school year, Superintendent Eric Wright said at the board meeting.
Individuals seeking certification typically cover the cost of the program, said Fernando Medina, HCISD chief human resources officer, but in this case the district will be covering the cost of the program.
“The district is being very intentional about allocating funds, prioritizing funds and this particular initiative,” Medina said.
