CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is facing a teacher staffing shortage just days before the start of the new school year. The district is short more than 500 teachers, which is a larger number than this time last year.
Superintendent Crystal Hill says that the district has about 200 teachers already interviewed and waiting for background checks to be completed. They should be filling these roles in the first few weeks of school. However, the district is still facing a significant shortage of teachers.
"We've kind of collapsed some classes, not overloading the classes, but collapsing them," Jason Carson, the chief school performance officer for CMS, said. "So students can have an adult inside of that classroom. We've also used our guest teachers as well."
Since the pandemic, CMS has juggled historic teacher shortages which can have an impact on teacher achievement. The district said it's not tracking the differences in student achievement in classes with certified teachers versus guest teachers or long-term substitutes.
"We are not doing any specific tracking of students in terms of the type of educator that they have, per se, through the evaluation process," Hill said. "However, we are always looking at the impact of educators and the impact that they're having on student outcomes and student achievement."
CMS is taking a number of steps to address the teacher staffing shortage. The district is offering signing bonuses and other incentives to attract new teachers. It's the same problem the district had last year, and according to CMS' human resource officer, it's going to persist.
"There was a prediction 10 years ago of what was going to happen," Kecia Coln said.
She said teacher vacancies will continue for years to come.
"Our institutions of higher education are not producing the same number of teachers," Coln said. "There are less people who are going into that as a career."
Hill committed to excellence in the classroom despite the teacher shortages.
"I have two girls, Madison and Morgan, and I expect the experience for all 141,000 students to be the same that I would want for Madison and Morgan," Hill said.
Also facing staffing issues are operational and support staff. All around the county bus driver shortages have caused major issues for school districts.
In Chicago and Philadelphia parents are being paid to take their students to school. And in Kentucky, one district had to close school for days because students were getting home as late as 10 p.m.
"Even in Jefferson County and Louisville, where that was, while there were some routing software issues, it still came to the reason they were having issues was because of staffing," Brian Schultz, CMS' Chief Operating Officer, said.
Schultz said they’ve made some unpopular decisions to make sure this doesn’t happen here.
"I would remind people that if we had not shifted to, you know, made some shifts, and especially with the express stop service, instead of being 30 drivers, short, we'd be more like 180 to 200 drivers short right now," Schultz said.
Express stops reduced the number of bus stops and routes for some magnet program students.
"We did that as as a means to make sure that we can maintain services we have while also providing a more efficient and faster route for students," Schultz said.
Also at issue is the number of cafeteria workers with the district being 156 employees short.
"Some schools have multiple vacancies, some schools have none," Schultz said. "So what we've done over the last few years, we've employed some temp agencies where when they fill those roles."
They’re also trying to staff custodians in schools in northern and southern Mecklenburg County, but they have a major problem.
"The cost of living is so high," Hill said. "So when you have staff who are not making a livable wage it's very difficult to recruit staff to spend gas to drive all the way to the northern parts of the county or the southern that that same thing is true with custodial work."
CMS concluded that it is not ideal to have hundreds of teaching and operational staff positions open, but they say the vacancies aren’t enough to disrupt students on a large scale.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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