As students return to class school districts across the country continue
to grapple with teacher and staff vacancies. But the scope of the
shortages and what's behind them varies widely across America's nearly
14,000 school districts. Carlton Jenkins is the superintendent of
Madison Metropolitan School District. That's the second largest school
district in Wisconsin. He joins us now, Mr. Superintendent. Thank
you for joining us. And welcome to the news hour you've seen as we
all have all these headlines about a
Traffic teacher shortage crisis in schools, The details
Sort of seem to depend on where you live. So paint us a picture.
What's the situation in Madison? Right now? I just tell you in Madison,
Wisconsin, we definitely are not immune to the teacher shortage or
exodus. One would say that we're seeing across the country. In fact,
this year we had record number of vacancies. We had 571 that it peaked
out at and we've just been trying to do as my colleagues as we're
talking across the country, everything we can to make sure that we
market
Our district, But we really have a great city here in Madison, Wisconsin,
and our state is different. But we've been doing a lot of things
like my colleagues to try to get people to come in Madison, Wisconsin.
But we know we have a great educational system that supported here
by our community. But it's definitely, uh, a teacher shortage. So
how are you doing in filling those vacancies? How many do you have
today? And how have you done it? What kind of case do you making?
Are you having to lower qualifications or raise pay as we've seen
happen in other places?
Well, one of the things right now we're looking at this really an
employee's market. Just historical issues of teacher shortages continue
to go in 1970. We had 200,000 individuals coming out ready to go
into teaching workforce. And now today we have in less than 90,000.
And we're seeing more women leave the workforce. So knowing that
we're trying to be very strategic in trying to keep the talent retain
the talent, you know that's very important, but an individual
Is after the pandemic.
A lot of people want to go closer home. Uh, some have come from far
away, So I'm trying to go back. But we're also trying to make sure
that the conditions are welcoming within our schools and that are
still feel valued. And so to do that. We have, uh, actually recruited
a record number of teachers here in Madison, Wisconsin over 500.
Staff here recently. We still have a shortage of roughly because
some have gone in someone come out about 134. But we're working diligently
to close those gaps and we haven't lowered our standards. We have
275 highly qualified, uh, individuals, sub staff ready to go and
a total about 600 staff that's out there.
And we're just working together to try to make it happen as you know,
And as we've seen, it's not just about teachers. Even though there's
a lot of focus on teachers. We saw a National Ed Week survey of principles
in school districts from July that said 72% of them said they didn't
have enough applicants to fill teacher positions. But 86% said they
didn't have enough applicants for bus driver vacancies. I have to
act that you've been doing this for more than 30 years. Have you
ever seen numbers like that?
No, but this is totally unprecedented depend. Emmett has definitely,
uh, increase what we're seeing in terms of just the vacancy the last
30 months or so the whole social, emotional mental health. Peace
has taken a whole on all of us. We never seen it like this. Last
year. We started with the bus drivers shortest, Like many of my colleagues
across the country, But this year we're in better shape.
Without bus drivers, But we have to look at full service all positions
and think about it differently and how we make everyone feel as if
though they belong and create the best environment. We know this
and often no, our board chair says it's every day. It's not. What
we do is who we are, and our budget must reflect that. But it's real
challenging for all of us, because some states
As Wisconsin have not invested as much kept up with the pace of the
cost of inflation. But today I have to say we had a great surprise
as our governor took the big step forward and coming in here and
announcing that he's going to give $90 million to support this teacher
shortage effort that all of us are going through and he gave us great
latitude on how we could use the money to help with the teacher shortage,
So we're very excited today. Here at Matt Pay is one part of it.
It. But as I'm sure you've seen teacher burnout is so high after
these brutal last couple of years are under more scrutiny, more public
pressure. They're part of political attacks and debates. Now you
filled those spots for now. Are you worried about keeping them filled
in the future?
Well, First of all, we haven't filled them all. He's still working
up until the last moment. We're going to continue to try to recruit
even one school start. We've gone outside of the country. We have
individuals who have come here, uh, from China, from Mexico. Individuals
from Spain all across the country. But we do know this that public
education is just upon the such a brutal attack. The polarization
Uh, it's really impacting the social emotional mental health will
be. I'm asking everybody just to chill out going into this year and
really try to support your educators. I mean, all the educated the
food service workers to R s E. A s in the classroom teachers administrators
that's really impacted our ability to retain people in education,
high quality people. I must say so I'm looking for everyone to really
support us in that way.
Carlton Jenkins, superintendent of Madison's Metropolitan School
District in Wisconsin. Joining us tonight, Mr. Superintendent, I
wish you all the best of luck as your school year gets underway.
Thank you for joining us. Thank you for caring the story to thank