Schools across Massachusetts scramble to hire teachers as a new year begins
BOSTON - While Massachusetts schools scramble for staff during these last days of summer, parents worry about another year of interruptions.
"We're still bouncing back from COVID and all the learning loss that happened," said Megan Cannon, who treated her two sons to ice cream Tuesday, to celebrate the start of a new school year.
The Boston Teachers Union and the Worcester School Superintendent both say their districts plan to put central office workers in classes to plug-in the gaps short-term. That has the state's largest teachers' union sounding an alarm.
"If you went to the dentist's office and they didn't have any hygienists, and they called me up and they said, 'why don't you come in and help out 'cause we have a shortage,'" said Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page. "These are professions. We can't just slot people in."
A check of the website called SchoolSpring, which posts education jobs, showed 5,151 teaching jobs available in Massachusetts Tuesday, and 14,269 different kinds of school jobs across the state.
"While this is more than usual at this point in the year, there's a couple explanations for this…we lost a lot of educators during the pandemic," said Boston Teachers Union President Jessica Tang.
BTU recently reached a tentative agreement with the district, which includes a promise of fewer students per teacher. In Boston, there are about 900 positions available. A spokesperson reports 219 are teacher vacancies. "Some of these shortages are in very hard to fill positions, so for example, I know that the district is looking for physics teachers and chemistry teachers," said Tang.
A spokesperson for Boston Public Schools says the district is partnering with the City of Boston and faith-based communities to organize job fairs. They're also working with Boston University to recruit students majoring in education.