The College of Saint Rose in Albany is announcing a new initiative to help address the teacher shortage in New York and across the country.
The “Build the Teacher Pipeline” is a four-pronged initiative to provide free on-campus housing for undergraduate students who major in education. It provides up to $7,500 for people who are going back to college to study teaching, expands the number of online courses, and launches a five-series webinar on professional development.
School administrators and local elected officials joined Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado at the Thelma P. Lally School of Education Thursday to announce the program. Founded in 1920, the College of Saint Rose says it awards more degrees and certificates in education than any college or university in the state.
Campus president Marcia White said there will be a shortage of about 180,000 teachers statewide over the next 10 years with not enough new teachers coming in to close the gap. She added schools are already feeling the impact.
“As kids picked out their backpacks morning, talk show hosts discussed the educational crisis and schools struggled to fill remain vacancies. Then, late last month, the National Center of Education Statistics released a new report. Nationally, the crisis was worse than feared. 53 percent of public schools surveyed said they started the school year understaffed. 69 percent reported that having too few candidates in the pipeline was the biggest challenge for hiring teachers.”
White said the pandemic only exacerbated the teacher shortage.
“Not enough high school students are considering careers in teaching. The declining interest was acute in 2008. And although we saw a rebound and stabilization in our own enrollment in (our) education program, that changed again, with the pandemic. I could list all the things that challenge teachers today and dissuade students from choosing careers in the field,” she said.
Brunswick Central School District Superintendent Angelina Maloney, a Saint Rose graduate, said she saw the impact of the pandemic first-hand.
“I think everybody got to see not only what teachers did, how hard they worked, but how valuable and integral they were to the school and the student community. Parents needed us just as much as their kids, so having the right teachers in front of your children is absolutely critical.”
With the new initiative, the offer of free housing could save teaching students more than $28,000 over four years. More flexibility in the graduate program aims to attract both high school students and those looking to go back to graduate school for a new career.
Additionally, the five-part webinar will help current teachers tackle the challenges of today. It will address increased student anxiety and the impact of student trauma on mental health. At the behest of the private college, a research firm surveyed over 700 teachers throughout the state about their most pressing needs following the pandemic.
“We must keep our teachers teaching and to do that we need support. They need support. Classroom management; social (and) emotional issues among students; the diversity, equity and inclusion training that have to be (done) in the classroom were among the most common topics that surfaced.”
Delgado, a Rhodes Scholar, said he would not be where he was today if he hadn’t been encouraged by a professor to switch his major from biology and chemistry to philosophy and political science – much to the chagrin of his father, he added.
“Why am I sharing all this? Because education really matters and teachers really matter. We're talking about creating possibilities. We're talking about creating opportunities. We're talking about lifting up people from all walks of life. And if education - and I believe it is - is the gateway to opportunity, then our teachers are the gatekeepers.”
Delgado, who was the first Black man elected in the 19th Congressional District, also stressed the need for a more diversity of teachers.
“We have to make sure we have enough people who are dedicated, who are qualified, who are diverse, who can train our future, who can raise up our future. And it's not just about educating the next leaders of the country, we're talking about informing our future, informing our citizenry. It is critical for any thriving democracy to have an informed citizenry, a citizenry that understands fact versus opinion.”
