Durham, NC: Half of teacher vacancies are in SPED; "reflecting a nationwide trend"
More than two months into the school year, Durham Public Schools was still looking for 68 more teachers. Which isn’t so bad, district administrators told the school board this fall—it’s an improvement from last year, thanks to new recruiting strategies and a fully-staffed human resources department.
But reflecting a nationwide trend, nearly half of those vacancies are in special education, which North Carolina calls Exceptional Children’s (EC) classrooms.
District leaders cited burnout as a major reason why; EC teachers cater to students with high needs, while their out-of-class time is often consumed by related paperwork and meetings, in a state notorious for low teacher pay.
To help fill these vacancies, DPS has entered an agreement with contracting agency Unlimited Instruction to bring teachers into the classroom as they work on getting provisional special education licenses from the state. The goal is for them to then be hired full-time by DPS and complete their licensing.
“It is a new and—I’ll be very honest with you—an unproven approach—that’s the reason why we find ourselves in a position where we would be willing to try something like this,” Deputy Superintendent Nicholas King told the INDY. “It’s because we really find ourselves in a really challenging environment as it relates to identifying teachers who can fill these important classroom spaces.”
As of October 30, DPS had 28 EC teacher vacancies and 329 EC teachers on staff. The contract with Unlimited Instruction could make a significant dent in the vacancy count by getting up to 20 teachers in the hiring pipeline. . .
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Meanwhile, the remaining EC vacancies are filled with instructional assistants or substitute teachers. Sometimes, EC teachers have to fill in on their planning periods or add to their caseloads of students, which can qualify for extra duty pay.
Kadeidra Smoots, senior executive director of human resources for DPS, said the vacancies can be a strain on the EC teachers who have to step in for meetings and extra paperwork on behalf of instructional assistants or long-term substitutes who are not licensed for certain tasks.
Smoots said some long-term substitutes, unprepared for the difficulty of the job, don’t last long. And similar to long-term substitutes and instructional assistants, the Unlimited Instruction contractors are not yet licensed and are learning on the job. . . .
About 80% of the 28 EC teacher vacancies in DPS are in self-contained classrooms for students with more severe disabilities, often with one lead teacher and multiple instructional assistants. The remaining vacancies are for EC resource teachers, who pull students out of their general education classrooms for specialized instruction. (Outside of the EC teacher vacancies, there are about 30 more openings for EC-related staffing, including licensed therapists, psychologists, and instructional assistants.)
Smoots said EC teachers need to be highly trained and specialized to teach students with a variety of behavioral and physical needs, who may experience behavioral or emotional crises.
“The kicking, the biting—for most teachers, especially new ones coming in, that’s not something that’s attractive for them,” Smoots said.
North Carolina is ranked notoriously lowfor teacher pay and per-pupil spending from the state, and while EC teacher turnover has always been a challenge, it worsened across the country after the pandemic. . .
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