The numbers change daily so it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many open teacher positions there are in the Tucson Unified School District. What is clear is that only 2 of the teachers the District hired in May had any real classroom experience.
While District officials claimed that they only had 146 openings, at that time they had 224 vacancies. The number of vacancies has changed from day to day, but it has not been fewer than 214.
District officials have claimed that the teacher shortage situation is better than it was last year, however the number of teacher vacancies is very nearly the same as last year at this time.
According to TUSD’s own numbers for 2015-2016, in August 2015 TUSD had 120 vacant teaching positions being filled by substitutes. After 7 more months, the number of teacher vacancies had barely been reduced. There were 110 teacher vacancies filled by substitutes in March 2016.
That is even worse than 2014-2015, when TUSD had 68 teacher vacancies in February 2015. The teacher vacancies numbers are just the vacancies, not the temporary positions due to leaves of absences.
With the current teacher openings nearly the same as this time last summer, TUSD may be on track to start the 2016-2017 school year with 100 or more teacher vacancies.
Many educators believe that Superintendent H.T. Sanchez’s discipline restrictions on principals are increasing the number of teacher resignations and causing some teachers to retire sooner. Those restrictions combined with all the new inexperienced teachers and the untrained substitutes filling TUSD’s teacher vacancies, the lack of discipline has gotten progressively worse.
Educators say that very experienced teachers are more skilled at dealing with problem students. While they may still need support from the administration, they do reduce the need for interventions.
Superintendent Sanchez is minimizing the impact the failure to report disciplinary incidents has on both students and teachers. The victims of abuse not only suffer from the incidents, but from the marginalization of their experience.
Not only has the District struggled to keep teachers, it has had a difficult time recruiting quality superintendents.
“Over the years we have changed superintendents and our students and teachers continue to leave at alarming rates. Without a change in policy, through a change on the Board, nothing will change in our schools. We must support Board members like Mark Stegeman and replace those Board members who seem intent on maintaining a failed status quo,” stated Board member Michael Hicks.