The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board cancelled Tuesday night’s meeting in an effort to avoid the ugly scenes that have played out week after week as parents and teachers come forward with their grievances. After spending well over $1,000,000 a year on crafting the optics to their advantage, the viral videos of frustrated stakeholders addressing the Board are making their way into social media news feeds has done immeasurable damage to the administration.
One of the key factors driving the discontent is the vast number of teacher vacancies. The problem is not a shortage of teachers; the problem is a shortage of teachers who are willing to teach for TUSD. Neither the surrounding districts nor the other large Arizona school districts have nearly as many vacancies as TUSD, relative to the sizes of those districts.
The TUSD Whistleblowers refer to that shortage in their most recent missive. In that letter, the Whistleblowers are critical of Congressman Raul Grijalva sycophants; Ann Eve Pederson, Jen Darland, and Tucson Weekly tabloid writer David Safier. They note that the Grijalva crew is targeting Dr. Mark Stegeman while “they could care less about the horrific and intentional exclusion rate of African American children in TUSD through its failed- Sanchez led- discipline practices (in violation of its own policies). Nor do they know or care anything about the rate of substitutes which are imposed on west and south side schools.”
Lillian Fox, a retired TUSD teacher and public school advocate studied the vacancies. As a form STEM teacher, Fox has been very concerned about the teacher vacancies and the abysmal job the District has done recruiting teachers.
In the years Fox has been counting TUSD’s teacher vacancies, she has never seen as many vacancies during a school year as there are this year.
Earlier, this year there were 155 teacher vacancies, according to Fox. Currently there are 174 vacancies now.
The numbers are getting worse because of the teachers who’ve resigned since the start of the school year, says Fox. There will be still more teacher resignations and separations as the school year goes on.
Fox advises:
The increasing number of teacher vacancies and the over 400 teachers who continue to leave TUSD every year, are the fault of a lazy Board majority that isn’t paying attention. They have failed to hold Superintendent Sanchez accountable, but they did give him a pay package of $480,000 per year with automatic $10,000 raises every year. Their 3-2 vote made him the highest paid superintendent in Arizona and one of the highest paid superintendents in the United States.
Once the school year starts, it’s unlikely that TUSD’s vacant teaching positions will be filled. Available teachers accept job offers before the school year starts. They don’t wait around.
The only potential applicants from now until the end of the school year are: teachers who move to Tucson during the school year from elsewhere, teachers who come back to teaching because of a change in their life circumstances, and the limited number of people who finish certification requirements in December. Those additional new teachers won’t make up for the number of teachers who are waiting to resign or retire at the end of first semester.
Currently, TUSD pays retired teachers only 70% of what it pays other teachers doing the same work. This year, TUSD reneged on its commitment to give the returning retired teachers, the same benefits as other teachers.
With such a disastrous number of vacancies, TUSD needs to do everything it can to encourage retired teachers to come back to the classroom, Retired teachers are the only potential source of large numbers of qualified teachers.
Attracting more retired teachers would certainly include paying them the same salary as other teachers doing the same work. Additional retired teachers might be interested in returning to the classroom, if they could job share or teach a reduced load.
To avoid the same disaster next year, this year TUSD needs to start enforcing the feeble discipline policies it has and pay attention to the teacher surveys results. TUSD’s teacher surveys show horrific problems with classroom discipline and bullying in too many schools. The surveys and the number of teacher resignations highlight the specific TUSD schools with intolerable working conditions and the principals who cause them. It’s impossible to lose over 400 teachers a year and expect to be able to replace them.