Schools are in crisis across the nation due to the ongoing effects of the covid pandemic. There are NO easy solutions to fixing these problems and getting angry at the schools on behalf of parents is kind of pointless because a lot of it is out of the school's control.
In many areas nationwide, there is a shortage of bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers, school security staff, and teaching assistants. The largest district in my city has been operating with 2/3 the cafeteria workers they need on each campus all year. Another district told parents before school started that they were so short on bus drivers that if they hadn't signed up on a list that was posted online for less than 24 hours, their kid was not going to be able to ride the bus that school year, and they would just have to find a way to get them to school.
No one wants to work as a sub. And so with all these shortages in teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teacher's aides... other teachers are getting called out of their prep periods to cover classes, special ed TA's who should be supporting special ed learners are being pulled and told to teach math, which if you signed up for AP calculus and it's now December and your school still can't hire a teacher, would be super frustrating, and everyone on every school campus is super burned out.
I'm sure someone will be quick to post "JUST PAY THEM MORE."
They can't. There is no money. Because of covid, many districts lost enrollment which means there's now a huge loss of funds from the state. Parents chose to homeschool (no state funding) or they are going virtual (no state funding) and things got disrupted so some may have gone to charters or other things. My local district told teachers they got a pay raise only if they (like this was the responsibility of teachers) could increase the enrollment for 21-22 by 4,000 students from 20-21. Instead, district enrollment fell by that many students. So now the district just released an announcement yesterday that they will be cutting back all secondary classes for 22-23, (which reading between the lines will allow them to eliminate 1/4 of elective teacher positions), and will also do early release every Wednesday, which has parents up in arms because of the childcare issue, and teachers will now teach 6 out of 7, which has them up in arms because of the loss of prep time.
So it's a mess.
= new reply since forum marked as read
