PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — With the Aug. 29 start of the school year approaching, Philadelphia is feeling the pinch of the national teacher shortage.
The school district has hired more than 700 new teachers this year, but Chief Talent Officer Larisa Shambaugh told the school board Thursday there are still about 230 vacancies.
“We’re over 97% staffed at this point, which is about where we were when we started the school year last year,” she noted. “That is despite needing to fill more positions based on more vacancies from last school year as well as more resignations.”
Complicating matters even more, 25 newly hired teachers changed their minds earlier this month and decided not to pursue their jobs. Shambaugh called those late openings “particular pain points.”
Special education classrooms and middle grades have the most gaps.
“Even though we feel we are in a good place with staffing, we are still hiring,” she added.
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Superintendent Tony Watlington, in an interview with KYW Newsradio, said schools with teacher vacancies will need to adjust come Aug. 29.
“We’ll have a couple of places where we have some very highly qualified substitutes that will be helping us and assisting us. But we’re going to make sure that every student has a teacher of record in the classroom,” Watlington said. “It will cause us to have to move a few resources and to perhaps move an academic or learning coach into a classroom.”
About 91% of school nursing jobs are filled, which translates to 19 schools without a nurse to start the year.
The district is also still experiencing a bus driver shortage — only 71% of those jobs are filled. Watlington said the district is working with private bus contractors to ensure district bus routes are covered.
“While we do have a lower percentage of bus drivers than we would like, they have put plans in place in the office of transportation to be able to run our routes,” Shambaugh told the board.
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