With students returning to school in less than two weeks, some area districts are scrambling to fill multiple last-minute teaching vacancies before classes begin.
Chances are, according to school officials in both Columbus Municipal and Starkville-Oktibbeha County public school districts, they won’t have full rosters by then, forcing them to adjust to a short staff in ways they hope still will not negatively impact instruction.
Meanwhile, parents registering their children in these school districts are sometimes finding the teacher assignment situation murkier than expected. In Starkville, specifically, some parents at registration this week collecting their children’s teacher assignments were literally given a slip of paper that read “Ms. Vacancy.”
Columbus may use substitutes
CMSD was still 20 teachers short of a full faculty as of Thursday, district personnel director Greg Hunley told The Dispatch. He said the administration plans to recommend 12 candidates for hire at the board of trustees meeting July 29.
The eight vacancies that would remain if the board hires all recommended candidates next week exactly matches the number of teachers trustees let out of their contracts earlier this month. Board members voted to waive the district’s policy of requiring a hardship for eight teachers wanting to break free from their contracts after they had already signed them. Without the waivers, to which CMSD Superintendent Philip Hickman vehemently objected, the teachers would have either been held to their contracts or forced to wait a full year before being licensed to teach again.
The Dispatch confirmed three of those teachers secured employment with Lowndes County School District on the same day CMSD trustees granted their waivers.
“We may have to start the year with substitutes in some classrooms,” Hickman said. “That may be for a day, maybe two days. It may be for the whole school year. Having even one teacher vacancy is significant. but we are being diligent about it. We’re exhausting our options.”
One of those options, Hickman said, is provisionally certifying assistant teachers through “expert citizenship.” In that program, he said teachers can lead classroom instruction in the area of their degrees for up to two years while completing a master of arts in teaching.
Without “experts” teaching the content, Hickman fears student performance will suffer. He said this is especially true for middle school and high school students — where teaching is more specialized by subject — as well as in third grade where the state requires students meet reading proficiency standards to be promoted.
Hickman refused to tack CMSD’s teacher shortage to academic performance or budget woes that are forcing the district to dip into its reserve funds this year to pay down its debt. Though the Mississippi Department of Education’s most recent academic accountability report rated Columbus as a D district, Hickman pointed to the high school’s C rating (up from a D) and its nearly 70 percent graduation rate in 2014-15 (up 10 percent from the previous year) as clear signs of progress.
“There’s a teacher shortage nationwide,” Hickman said. “This is not happening here due to the quality of our schools because our district is on the rise.”
Starkville has room to spread students
While Starkville- Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Superintendent Lewis Holloway said he understands why parents may be concerned with a “Ms. Vacancy” teacher assignment, the situation there isn’t as dire as that slip of paper makes it seem.
As of this week, Holloway said the district has four teaching vacancies — two at Henderson-Ward Stewart Elementary and two at Armstrong Middle School. At least at HWS — where there is a third grade and fourth grade vacancy, respectively — Holloway said each of those grades can operate a teacher short, meaning spreading two to three additional students per class among the other 19 teachers in each of those grades. He said a similar strategy might be possible among the teaching teams at the middle school.
“We will continue to actively recruit qualified teachers for those vacancies into the school year if we have to,” he said. “We’ll at least keep them in the budget so we can fill them the next school year.”
Holloway said SOCSD typically loses 30 teachers per year to retirement or faculty moving away from the district. In most cases, he said he finds out about such attrition by March or April each year, giving the district plenty of time to replace those teachers before the next school term. However, this year, six teachers announced in May they would leave the district.
“If we know by spring, we get the best of the best for teachers because we’re right at Mississippi State’s doorstep,” Holloway said.
Another factor Holloway said affected teacher placement was school realignment, especially between Sudduth Elementary and HWS. The K-5 East Oktibbeha Elementary campus, part of the old Oktibbeha County School District that consolidated with Starkville in 2015, is closing, and those students will attend school at Starkville campuses this fall. In response to the influx of students, SOCSD made Sudduth a K-1 campus, HWS a 2-4 campus and moved the fifth grade to Overstreet Elementary downtown.
Six second grade teachers who had taught at Sudduth during its tenure as a K-2 campus moved down to teach lower grades, Holloway said.
“They just had such a deep relationship with Sudduth and the administration there that, when second grade moved, they wanted to stay,” he said.
The district has since filled all of the open second grade slots.
Lowndes district nearly fully staffed
Superintendent Lynn Wright said Lowndes County School District has only one teaching vacancy remaining — a social studies teacher/coach at West Lowndes High School.
He said the district lost 38 of its teachers from last school year, mostly to retirement, but “had no problems” replacing them.
“We’re fortunate to maintain the faculty we have, and there’s a lot of interest in our positions when we have an opening,” Wright said. “We’ve been very blessed.”
Salaries
Only $500 separates the lowest to highest base salaries among the three school districts for teachers with bachelor’s degrees and 0-2 years of experience. The state requires a minimum base salary of $34,390 for those teachers. That number rises based on experience and whether the teacher has a post-graduate degree.
School districts provide local supplements to the state base, which also rises with degree level and years of experience.
LCSD pays teachers with 0-2 years of experience and a bachelor’s $36,390, which includes a $2,000 supplement, according to the district’s salary schedule. SOCSD provides a $1,750 supplement for those teachers, making their salaries $36,140. CMSD adds a $1,500 supplement for entry level teachers for a salary of $35,890.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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