With students heading back to school this month, there’s concern about teacher shortages across the country.
Teacher shortages are also being felt in the Alamo City.
“We actually, consistently for the last several years have had a teacher shortage, particularly in the areas of math and science, and a really big shortage for bilingual teachers,” said Carolyn Castillo, Component Director at Education Service Center – Region 20 in San Antonio.
Holly Eaton with the Texas Classroom Teachers Association was a guest on the Texas Standard Monday and believes both recruitment and retention need to be addressed, or it’s a lost cause.
“You have basically a leaky bucket that you keep filling and you’ll never get it full unless you do something to address retention. And by that I mean addressing things like some of the substandard working conditions that teachers are in and increasing their salaries and benefits,” said Eaton.
Some school districts have raised their first year teacher salaries to $50,000 or more. Eaton believes the problem with that is that the increase addresses the recruitment side, but not the retention side.
Most public schools begin classes on August 24.
