Education and labor experts say schools are running into an unexpected side effect of the very thing that was supposed to help them this year: federal Covid relief dollars.
they’ve been warning about for years — with falling teacher certification rates — has arrived, fueled by the extreme difficulties of teaching during the pandemic.
The total number of people working in public education — including teachers, administrators, bus drivers and other school staff — is similar to what it was when the pandemic began in March 2020, he said. What’s different now is the number of job openings — they’re at a 20-year high. Joseph earmarked some of her district’s Covid relief dollars to pay teachers an extra $6,000 this summer in hopes of retaining them, but it wasn’t enough, she said. She has eight vacancies, meaning she’s missing a fifth of her teaching force and more than half of the teachers she needs in core subjects such as English and math.
Susanne Sims, 40, said she got a nearly $10,000 raise this year — and work conditions more attuned to Covid safety — when she left one suburban district outside Detroit for another. In Eastpointe, McLeod said, his district earmarked some of its $18.5 million for building ventilation upgrades and buying books for classroom libraries. Other spending plans — like expanding a preschool program to serve all district 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds — have been hobbled by hiring issues.
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