California currently faces a scarcity of high school teachers. According to the California School Boards Association, 75 percent of districts in California reported a shortage in teachers. Although the issue hasn’t directly impacted Aragon, the school might be at risk due to its location. Teachers find it harder to live in the Bay Area due to the high cost of rent. According to TeacherSalaryInfo.com, the average teacher salary around San Mateo is $62,870. The Mercury News states that the average rent rate varies at $4,550 per month in San Francisco, $2,500 per month in Oakland, and $2,912 per month in San Mateo, making some teachers’ salary inadequate compared to living costs. Therefore, California’s state government has proposed SB 62, which involves helping teachers with financial aid to balance the low teacher salary with the expensive living cost in the Bay Area.
The amount of requirements to become a teacher may also overwhelm people, preventing some potential teachers to pursue this profession. Spanish Teacher, Instructional Technology Coordinator and Instructional Coach Nicole Elenz-Martin elaborates, “[Teachers] need to go through a lengthy worth of lesson design, observation, [analysis of] student work and assessments, [etc.] Even after their credentialing program, they need to go through two more years of intense work of analyzing their teaching practice to prove that they’re really cut out here.” Teachers can majorly impact students’ educations and lives from inspiring them to pursue this career or supporting them through a rough time, so they are held to a very high standard.
According to SFChronicle, special education, bilingual and math or science teachers tend to leave school more easily than other teachers.
Aragon Principal Patricia Kurtz explains, “[Math and science teachers] can go off to a high tech industry and make much more money initially than in education … You don’t have as many people going into special education. It’s a very demanding field. You’re working with students who have many educational issues that they need to be working with them on. Sometimes, it just becomes too demanding for what people want to address. [For bilingual teachers,] we’re such a multicultural world that if you speak another language, there’s many more openings out there.”
Budget cuts may contribute to the decline of teachers. A loss in funding may lead to more students per class or a lengthy transportation schedule.
Elenz-Martin claims, “It’s very intimidating for teachers to have to look at that salary and try to figure out, ‘how am I going to live when I’m working on that kind of salary?’ Sometimes teachers have to commute very far to be able to work in a district that pays high enough for them to live in an area that they can afford. Teachers [may] have very long commutes because they’re not able to live in the area where they are teaching. [Budget cuts also] make class sizes larger, which will put more stress on teachers because they’re having to deal with more students, more emails, more meetings, parents and counselors. The more students that that teacher has, there’s less ability for growth and exploration and creativity.”
Kurtz emphasizes from her years of observation, “Some teachers are the reason why students go into the career that they go into. For other teachers, it may be just that it allows a student to complete high school [because] they’ve had an individual that’s mentored and supported them.”
The issue of the teacher shortage has become so imperative to the point that schools are offering raises and bonuses for positions that hard to fill in, as well as housing allowances. The state legislature has passed three bills in order to solve the issue of the teacher shortage. Bill SB 915, proposed for the recruitment of teachers, highlights a better preparation for teachers. SB 62 provides financial aid for teachers due to high living costs. The last bill, SB 933, provides an experienced teacher as a mentor for a new teacher in a classroom setting.
With these new measures, the state hopes to end California’s teacher shortage and provide enough teachers to serve California’s student population.
