Nationwide teacher shortage hitting Colonial School District especially hard
NEW CASTLE, Del. (CBS) -- The teacher shortage is a crisis affecting schools nationwide. It's hitting the Colonial School District in Delaware especially hard. Some classes have to be taught via Zoom because there just aren't enough teachers.
"I was very shocked 'cause I never seen anything like this before.," William Penn High School sophomore Lmani Edwards-Tyler said.
Imani is a 10th grader at William Penn High School in New Castle.
When she opened the door, she was expecting a traditional math class.
"I walked in and I heard someone talking, but I didn't see the teacher," she said. "So I sit down, and I'm still looking for the teacher. And I'm looking at the board and she's like in the little corner and I'm like, 'Oh.' And I'm like, 'oh, she's on Zoom.'"
That surprise reaction was shared by many of her classmates.
The Colonial School District is short about 20 teachers. So this school year, officials are contracting their math instruction to a Delaware-based tutoring company called Back to Basics Learning Dynamics.
About 900 students are now learning math online.
"With what we've been going through with our staffing this year," Brock Donovan, the deputy of academics at William Penn High Schools, said, "we wanted to be creative, thinking outside the box."
The school district says it's not able to offer bonuses to attract new teachers, but it is actively recruiting current students and recent graduates of Wilmington University, University of Delaware and Delaware State University.
"There's just been in decline of people just going into teaching in general," Holly Sage, director of human resources for the Colonial School District, said. "And then, so we're just trying to right now to -- once we get teachers -- just retain the teachers that we have."
Math isn't the only subject affected.
French is also being taught virtually, through an Arizona-based company called Edgenuity.
"We don't even have our computers yet," William Penn High School junior Jade Watson said, "so we can't even do the class online."
"When you're online, you're behind a camera and the teacher can't tell what you're actually doing," Lmani said, "so meanwhile, someone can be like not paying attention at all."
To keep kids focused, each room has one or two staff members monitoring the class.
The district says it will keep teaching classes online until enough teachers fill up the classrooms.
