A shortage of qualified teachers impacted a recent local school board decision on three special education hires at schools within Morgan Hill Unified School District.
The board of education unanimously approved district leadership’s request to hire a trio of non-certificated instructors with experience in the field who are in the process of working toward adequate credentials.
“We are in a teacher shortage,” explained Human Resources director Fawn Myers as she introduced the items from the Aug. 2 agenda.
Citing statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, Myers told the board that the number of college students enrolling in teacher credentialing programs has declined sharply from just over 700,000 in 2010 to less than 500,000 in 2014 nationwide. For the current year, she said the interest still does not meet the demand.
Even with that, MHUSD was able to hire about 50 new teachers for the 2016-17 school year, as announced earlier at the same meeting.
With a Provisional Internship Permit, which must be board approved and then issued through the California Commission of Teacher Credentialing, Amanda Vuniwai will teach special ed at Los Paseos Elementary School; Nathan Padilla at Live Oak High School; and Sarina Santiago at Nordstrom Elementary School.
Vuniwai and Padilla were substitute teachers at MHUSD and taught in the district’s summer school special education program this summer. Santiago has been working as a paraeducator in the district since November 2015. All three have entered credentialing programs and will have experienced mentor teachers helping them throughout the school year.
“Throughout California, provisional, short term and intern permits are being issued to fill immediate staff needs and now are comprised of one-third of all credentials being issued,” Myers continued. “That’s staggering.”
At the Aug. 16 meeting, the district is requesting board approval for two more PIPs, for Raven Jackson to teach special education at Barrett Elementary School and for Adam Olmos-Crawley to teach science at Martin Murphy Middle School. Both candidates also were substitutes with the district who taught in summer school.
To help support these teachers, MHUSD also instituted a tuition reimbursement program for those candidates for “current employees who already have a bachelor’s degree and are interested in teaching and enrolling in a credentialing program,” said Myers, noting that all three hires were eligible.
The district posted four special education vacancies on the online teacher job site, edjoin.org, as well as on the district’s website and Facebook page to attract certificated teachers to no avail.
“Qualified applicants have not applied,” Myers explained. “It is difficult to hire qualified teachers this late in the school year in a high need credential area such as special education.”
