“A teacher famine,” Idaho school districts struggle to fill positions

School just got out for the summer, but across the state multiple school districts are looking at next year’s needs with trepidation as most have multiple teaching positions they need to fill.

“We were in a meeting with administrators in our district and we were talking about a teacher shortage,” said Randy Lords, the Assistant Superintendent of Madison County School District 321. “Our superintendent said ‘you know we’re not in a shortage, we’re in a famine.'”

Lords said higher turnover is not uncommon for Madison School District 321, as they have a unique situation being right next to Brigham Young University-Idaho. “We hire a lot of BYU-Idaho students once they graduate, but after two or three years, a lot of them leave if a spouse moves on to grad school or gets a job in another state.”

In years past, the higher turnover wasn’t a problem. The school district could count on new BYU-I graduates to take their place and fill the open positions. Lords says that’s changing as fewer people enter the teaching profession and more of their long time teachers are leaving for higher paying jobs.

“We’re seeing them (teachers) leave the profession because of low wages, leaving because of terrible insurance packages, leaving because in the next state over they’re paying teachers significantly higher wages,” said Lords referencing Wyoming’s higher teacher salaries.

Lords said higher wages in other states dissuades new teacher graduates from coming to Idaho to replace the old teachers.

“You have teachers graduating from a four year degree and having $15,000 to $20,000 in debt, and then having a $200 to $300 student loan payment,” Lords said. “Coming right out of college, their student loan payment could be, in some cases, as much as a third of their salary they take home for that month.”

Idaho’s starting teacher salary sits at just over $31,000 annually. The already low monthly paycheck drops dramatically when student loan payments, health insurance, and continuing education costs are taken into account. “We have some teachers paying upwards of $900 a month for health insurance for their families,” Lords said. “You combine that with those other costs and its a tough sell. “

Madison School District 321 is not alone with its challenges. Most school districts across the state are fighting similar battles. Rural districts in particular are struggling to get teachers, as they face the additional challenge of attracting young city loving millennials to schools that are far away from urban areas.

“Probably our biggest challenge is where Salmon is,” said Chris Born, Superintendent for Salmon School District 291. “You know some people don’t love being two-and-a-half hours away from the nearest Walmart.”

Small school districts like Salmon also have to travel for any services that teachers or school districts require. “Many of the things that the state department gets us as far as career development, we have to travel as far as Boise,” Born said. “That’s five hours of driving.”

Considering teachers have to take continuing educational credits on a regular basis, traveling to fulfill those educational requirements becomes a time and money consuming proposition.

It’s not all bad news for rural school districts. Born said the remoteness of Salmon and many other rural districts can also be their biggest draw. “Some people really like small towns. Many of our teachers move here and stay for life,” said Born. “But its becoming difficult to replace them when they retire and that’s what we’re seeing.”

One thing that both Born and Lords stressed was that they feel like things are getting better and that the legislature is listening. “I actually want to thank our legislators,” Lords said. “We’ve seen in the past few years they’ve made a concerted effort to increase teacher salaries. So they are listening and we appreciate that.”

Idaho’s recently passed five year career ladder will “inject around $250 million into salaries for teachers across the state,” said Blake Youde with the Idaho Sate Board of Education.

Youde said the board is currently working on a proposal to help reduce the costs of health insurance that teachers have to pay. “While right now its very much in the idea phase, we’d like to see if we can address that (the cost of health insurance) in the 2017 legislative session,” said Youde.

Youde also said the board of education wants to improve the pipeline process to get more students to become teachers, and get more teachers to teach in Idaho. The hope is in the long run the combined factors of better salaries, insurance, and career options will make Idaho an attractive place to become a teacher.

“We have professional development programs so the teachers that enter the profession will stay in it because they’re stronger better teachers,” said Youde.