Posted on: Thursday, July 1, 2004
DOE 500 teachers short
| • | Switch means stronger role for DOE |
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
With the new school year fast approaching, the state Department of Education is getting closer to filling about 1,500 teacher vacancies in Hawai'i's public schools but remains about one-third short of its goal.
Finding new teachers is an annual challenge in Hawai'i, where the cost of living is high and teacher salaries are typically near the bottom nationally. But a national teacher shortage, caused in part by the retirement of teachers from the Baby Boom generation, has made the competition among states more intense.
Hawai'i recruiters can offer relocation bonuses or geographic hardship money as incentives for teachers to work in rural areas, said Fay Ikei, who directs recruitment at the DOE, while some school districts on the Mainland are working with banks to help teachers with home loans.
"It's very competitive," Ikei said.
The DOE has finished its recruiting plunge and is now placing teachers in new jobs as schools on year-round calendars start up again this month. Some students at Mililani Middle School actually opened the new school year last week. Schools on traditional calendars start in late August.
Ikei said about two-thirds of the new hires have been identified.
The department, which has had to find about 1,400 new teachers a year for the past several years because of retirement and teachers who leave for other jobs, has refined its search techniques. Hawai'i recruiters often specifically target certain regions of the country and work with recruiting agencies and partners, such as Marist College in New York, to steer teacher candidates to the Islands.
Ikei admitted, a little sheepishly, that the DOE has looked at school districts that have been forced to trim staff because of budget cuts. She said the department has been particularly successful at recruiting in Portland, Ore., Los Angeles and elsewhere in California, and New York. "We're being more deliberate, more targeted," she said.
In the 2002-2003 school year, the latest for which complete statistics are available, the DOE hired 1,363 new teachers. The majority of new recruits were women, typically between the ages of 26 and 30, and starting their first teaching jobs.
Special education teachers continue to be in demand as the DOE responds to the federal Felix consent decree, a court order that requires the department to provide adequate services to mental and physically disabled students. Of the 580 new elementary school teachers hired in the 2002-2003 school year, for example, 134 were assigned to teach students with learning disabilities, the largest category of special education students. In middle and high schools, 147 of the 783 new hires were assigned to students with learning disabilities.
But the DOE has also sought to fill shortages in math, science, English and counseling at middle and high schools.
Educators are trying to develop more homegrown talent, which would reduce the costs of bringing in teachers from the Mainland and could provide more stability at schools. Local teachers may be more culturally attuned to Hawai'i than transplants and more inclined to stay in their jobs longer.
Teachers from six high schools finished training yesterday to lead a new teacher cadet program that will start in the upcoming school year. High school seniors at the schools will be able to take a year-long course that will help them decide whether they want to pursue teaching as a career.
In the 2002-2003 school year, 57 percent of new teachers at the DOE had degrees from out-of-state colleges, primarily bachelor's degrees, and most did not meet the requirements for a license. Of the 41 percent who had degrees from state colleges, 27 percent graduated from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
"We really have to do something about the teacher shortage," said Linda Shimamoto, a retired school principal and president of the Hawai'i Alliance for Future Teachers, which supports the teacher cadet program. "We want to see a lot of these students go on to our local colleges and universities.
"Right now, they are not able to produce enough teachers to meet the need."
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
