CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Florida’s teacher shortage - the problem state leaders won’t solve | Commentary

Orlando Sentinel - 1/17/2023

Five months ago, Florida’s public schools started the year with thousands of teaching vacancies.

This wasn’t really a surprise. Florida has generally treated teachers like dirt.

But Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had an idea: Let military veterans teach.

This is what I wrote at the time:

“I think it’d be great to help more veterans launch second careers. But here’s what the governor doesn’t seem to realize:

Veterans have been in Florida classrooms for years. Yet many got the hell out, saying the same thing other teachers say — that teaching in this state stinks.”

In other words, why would anyone think military veterans want to be underpaid and disrespected anymore than existing teachers?

Flash forward to today.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Florida now has a whopping 5,294 posted vacancies — more than triple the number the state had five years ago, according to Florida Education Association. (Plus another 4,600 openings for teachers’ aides and other school employees.)

And as for veterans filling the gap, well, the Military Times reported last month that the governor’s plan to “grow Florida’s teaching workforce” had added a total of seven teachers.

In response to a inquiry from the Sentinel, the state said last week that number was up to 11. But even if five times that many vets have begun teaching, the state’s shortage of more than 5,200 teachers would still be more than 5,200.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. GOP lawmakers have spent the better part of the last year accusing Florida teachers of being lazy, incompetent indoctrinators — sometimes even pedophiles.

And lawmakers have coupled those insults with some of the lowest pay in America. While the governor admirably boosted pay for starting teachers, veteran teachers have been largely left behind, so that average teacher pay in Florida still ranks 49th, according to the National Education Association.

If you talk to teachers — something Tallahassee lawmakers seem loath to do — they’ll tell you Florida does more to run off good teachers than attract them. That includes military veterans.

I spoke last year to an army staff sergeant who served all over the world as a Black Hawk mechanic and decided he wanted to launch a second career as a teacher. He went through all the trouble of getting a degree, but lasted only two years in Florida’s classrooms, saying teachers here didn’t get the support they needed. Now he drives a truck.

Another, an environmental-science teacher in Volusia who served in the Marines for more than a decade, said he’s toughing it out, but said others won’t because of “blatant disrespect for our profession from state government.”

This isn’t really complicated. Nobody wants to be treated like garbage.

So how do we solve this problem? Well, first the state would have to admit it has one. That doesn’t seem to be the case right now.

When the Sentinel’s education reporter, Leslie Postal, asked the Florida Department of Education about the state’s teacher shortage, a spokesman responded: “The notion of a large teacher shortage in Florida is a myth generated by media activists and teachers unions.”

That statement says a lot.

The spokesman went on to claim Florida’s teacher shortage is lower than the national average — a claim contradicted by other studies, including a recent one from Kansas State University which used the state’s own numbers to conclude Florida had the second-highest number of teacher vacancies in America and was in the top third for vacancies per 100 positions and for putting “underqualified” teachers in classrooms.

But just for argument’s sake, take away the state-by-state comparison and look at what you know: Florida has thousands of vacancies, more than triple what it had just five years ago.

Now decide for yourself whether that’s good or bad. And think about how many times during your school years you had classes staffed by full-time temps or subs. (I’m pretty sure I can count the number from my school days on zero fingers.)

Not having a full-time teacher in your class isn’t normal. Nor should it be acceptable.

DeSantis received a lot of attention last year for his veterans-in-classrooms idea. One cheerleader with the Washington-insider publication, The Hill, called it “Ron DeSantis’s genius plan to solve the teacher shortage crisis.”

I’m guessing that pundit’s kids aren’t among the tens of thousands in Florida who still don’t have full-time teachers.

If Florida leaders want to solve this problem — and there’s increasing evidence they don’t even consider it one — they’re going to have to go beyond headline-grabbing stunts. And the best way to do that would be to actually listen to educators.

Stop calling them names. Stop staging press conferences. Start treating public education like every enlightened society in modern history has — foundational to opportunity, innovation and a strong economy. Also the ultimate equalizer.

That’s not a myth. Neither are the vacancies. And if lawmakers are unable to solve that problem or even acknowledge it, then it’s up to voters to make them.

You can find the contact information for your state legislator at leg.state.fl.us

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

©2023 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.