As students and teachers prepare to head back to the classroom in New York, a statewide organization representing local districts has released a report on how to address a teacher shortage in New York.
The New York State School Boards Association this week published its report called “Plug and Play: Strategies for Addressing Teacher Shortages at the Local Level.”
The report finds that shortages are concentrated in select subjects, including career and technical education, health sciences, English language arts, science, special education, and library media.
The report makes several recommendations, including making compensation more attractive for potential teachers.
WAMC’s Lucas Willard spoke with NYSSBA spokesman David Albert to learn more…
So, you know, this is something that needs to be, obviously, discussed at a local level between the school district management, the Board of Education, the administration, as well as the collective bargaining unit for teachers in that school district. But we thought, if we're going to be talking about recruiting teachers, and if we are looking at a moment in time when we do have shortages, then I think we can certainly throw compensation into the mix, as far as factors to be considered. We do think that teachers here in New York State are paid well comparatively to other states. However, when you look at those who have a bachelor's degree, data from the US Census Bureau found that classroom teachers in New York earn about $20,000 less than for all people with bachelor's degrees. Now obviously you're throwing in people who have engineering, computer science, finance, lots of different degrees that tend to skew those numbers higher. But the fact of the matter is, it is something that schools need to consider in discussion with their collective bargaining units. And we have found, as we worked on this report, that the profession or the field of teaching is kind of at an all-time low when it comes to reputation or prestige, if you will. So, we think, you know, obviously this is something that districts need to consider, and they need to obviously consider job prestige, and part of that is compensation. But there's also other factors beyond compensation, which is the district culture, which is opportunities for professional development, all of those things should be woven into a package that can attract good quality teachers to our schools.
Now, I do want to just shift gears for a moment and talk about some of the changes that we're seeing at the federal level, as the Trump administration has moved forward with the federal Department of Education and the downsizing there. How is that having any ripple effects in New York as school districts look at their finances, as they prepare for the upcoming school year? How have those federal cuts and rollbacks impacted the state?
Yeah, so at this point in time, we haven't seen a lot of impact here in New York. I would say that first of all, federal funding is a relatively small percentage of education funding here in New York state. So, it's probably about 6% of education funding. So, state and local funds make up the vast majority of education funding. In addition, most federal funding comes to schools in the form of Title I, which is for schools that have high levels of poverty, as well as IDEA for students with disabilities. So, we haven't seen cuts to those areas here at this point for New York schools. Going forward, it could potentially be problematic, but at this particular time, we haven't gotten any indication that there'd be cuts for students, programs for students with disabilities. And again, you know, the primary focus here in New York for schools is really on state support and then local funding as well. With regard to the Department of Education, schools here in New York are really under the watch of the State Board of Regents. We do have, obviously federal programs that that we have to comply with, and we're seeing that some of those programs could potentially be transferred to other federal agencies, such as the Department of Labor, with, like, career and technical education, or some programs could get transferred over to Health and Human Services. So, that's really kind of a wait and see at this point. And I think the primary concern for schools would just be that programs that are federally funded and that impact students would continue to be funded. But you know, we have to kind of wait and see at this point. And I think we haven't seen a huge impact as of yet here in New York,
If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with David Albert from the New York State School Boards Association. David, there are a lot of changes at the state that are going into effect for this upcoming school year, notably a bell-to-bell ban on cell phones and smartphones in schools, connected devices. Now, the school districts across the state have had time over the summer to develop their plans and comply with this new policy. How have school districts been doing and what do you think about the implementation as the school year kicks off here?
So, school districts obviously are complying. I mean, there was a date of August 1st to essentially develop a policy for compliance. So, my understanding is that vast majority of districts have actually developed their policies. They're posted, the governor, has a website where you can view your school district's policies. So, our perspective on this is we weren't really supportive of a statewide bell-to-bell ban. We felt that school boards are elected by their communities, that they should be empowered to create a policy that makes sense in their community. So, there's other options besides just bell-to-bell. Bell-to-bell is draconian. It basically says from the time you arrive at school in the morning till the time you leave, you essentially have no access to your phone. We thought that boards should be able to work with their communities and come up with perhaps alternatives where there'd be no cell phone in the classroom, but maybe during a break, you know, you would be allowed to check your cell phone, something along those lines. But that being said, we do have a bell-to-bell ban. Districts are complying. I think that, you know, some districts had these, had these in place already. There's no question that having a cell phone in the classroom can be distracting. We agree with that, and we don't really think that there's a place for a phone in the classroom unless it's being used as part of instruction, or if there's a special circumstance, which the law does allow for special circumstances, so it's good in that respect. But again, we just really felt that schools should have some flexibility there, and there was some funding that was put aside in the state budget. It was about $13 and a half million for districts to procure storage items. So, if they wanted to have, you know, some type of storage system in place for students who bring their cell phones to school, they store them, the funding was available. It did come out a little bit late. I think it came out later this this summer, so that it would have, it would have been, good for that funding to be released a little bit earlier. But that being said, you know, districts are complying. And you know, we'll have a cell phone ban in place starting next week.
There are new graduation requirements that the state is rolling out. It calls it the “portrait of a graduate,” and there's a number of changes that come with that. And also the proposal to have the regents exams no longer be a graduation requirement. How does the School Boards Association feel about the changing New York state graduation requirements?
Yeah, so you know, this goes to the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on graduation measures, and the State Education Department has a plan for implementation, which, which they call New York Inspires. So those new graduation changes are going to be phased in and I think that the education department is really kind of looking at, what is the workforce need, what are the skills that and kind of the base of knowledge that a student needs to have in order to be successful in post-secondary education. So, we think that it's, it's good for the state to be reevaluating what it means to be a successful high school graduate here in New York state. You know, the world has changed so much. I mean, if you look at just where we are today compared to 10, 15 years ago. I mean, the jobs are changing. You know, 10 or 15 years ago, we didn't have people who were skilled in writing prompts for artificial intelligence. We didn't need people who were adept at social media. I mean, the world has changed. Technology changes, and so the skills that we teach in schools need to move with those changes as well. So, they are going to move toward a one diploma, which is a phase in process. I believe this year, this school year, is phase one of the move toward these new graduation standards, and basically includes new credit requirement information. So, what, you know, credits were required in, you know, previously, such as four credits of English, or, you know, three credits of math, science, etc, those could be changing. But basically, you know, we think it's a good thing that the state is taking a look at where we are in terms of teaching students and really making them as successful, or at least preparing them to be as successful as they can be for the world beyond high school.
Lastly, David, I wanted to ask you about the switch to electric school busses from fossil fuel powered vehicles, and this has been an issue that's been controversial for a number of years, particularly in upstate New York. How does the School Boards Association feel about the state's rollout? So far, there have been lawmakers that have pushed for exemptions and delays. What's your take on it?
Well, we have reservations about the ability of school districts to meet the deadlines that are associated with a zero-emission bus mandate. I think that the transition timeline goes like to 2035 which is really not that far away. And there's a point at which you'll no longer be able to purchase diesel busses, which is much earlier, much sooner. So, there's just a lot of questions about this right now. I mean, we could go down the list. First is cost. It costs close to half a million dollars for one electric school bus, whereas the cost for a diesel bus is about $150,000, so if you want to do the math and take a look at, you know, a district that has a couple dozen buses in its fleet, doing that conversion is going to be pretty expensive. Second, the purchase of a school bus in New York State requires the approval of voters in the school district. It hasn't always been easy to get that approval, so that poses a real problem for schools, because they can't comply with a mandate if the voters are not authorizing them to purchase busses. So it doesn't happen everywhere, but it does happen, so that's certainly a concern. Third, infrastructure. Do we have the infrastructure in place to charge these electric vehicles? And you know, that's obviously a big deal, because if you're driving your car down the road and you run out of gas and there's no gas station, you know, that's not a good situation. Same is true for an electric vehicle. Obviously, you know, schools aren't going to let that scenario happen. But the point is, you need to be able to charge them. And we're not sure that the infrastructure is really in place right now. Battery ranges, you know, along with the question of infrastructure, we're not really sure that the battery arranges. Battery ranges are really holding up to what the manufacturer manufacturers say that they are. So, there's, there's really just a lot of concerns right now, and I know that the state has responded by including the possibility of granting waivers to the 2027, purchase deadline, which is when the districts will have to transition to just purchasing electric or zero emission vehicles, so we'll see. Obviously, we understand that the goal here is to try to be more environmentally friendly. We just have to really take a look at the practical implications of this mandate.
David Albert is Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at the New York State School Boards Association, Dave, thanks again for speaking with me.
I appreciate it. My pleasure.
