![]() ![]() “When I was a principal, we had tremendous turnover among our bus drivers and the folks who staffed our cafeterias,” said Stefan Lallinger, a former teacher and administrator at a charter school in Louisiana who now serves as fellow and director of the Century Foundation’s Bridges Collaborative, which advocates for school integration and other progressive policies. ‘Dramatically underpaid and undercompensated’ĬOVID-specific policies alone don’t explain the full story, though. In some cases, requirements for masks and vaccinations in some places, and restrictions on those requirements in others, might be keeping some people from returning to jobs they once had, or from signing up to fill gaps. Roughly half of school districts that answered a recent survey from the NSTA categorized their bus driver shortage as “severe” or “desperate.” Approximately two-thirds said bus driver shortages were their number one problem at the moment. Now that they’re trying to catch up, they’re finding that prospective drivers aren’t able to get the necessary licenses and certifications quickly enough to be ready for the first day of school. On top of those factors, school districts that weren’t open for full in-person instruction at times last school year got behind on their normal recruiting schedule for bus drivers, said Curt Macysyn, executive director of the National School Transportation Association. Those numbers are well below living wages across the United States, especially for workers with children. School bus drivers make on average between $15 and $17 an hour, according to 2018 data from BLS. The median annual pay for K-12 teaching assistants in May 2020 was $28,900, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On an individual basis, though, many school workers are compensated at far lower rates than teachers and administrators. ![]() Roughly a quarter of the K-12 system’s budget goes toward non-teaching staff. The next largest group, instructional aides, includes more than 2 million workers nationwide. Teachers make up less than half of the K-12 workforce, which includes more than 6 million people. There’s little doubt the pandemic has punctured the persistent enthusiasm for serving students that keeps many school employees going even in tough conditions. “Even thinking about going somewhere else, it depresses me.” The bus driver shortage hits hard ![]() “I’m energized by working with the students,” she said. Why does Bennett keep going after more than two decades working K-12 jobs like these, despite the exhaustion she and colleagues routinely endure? What often gets overlooked, though, is the impact the workers who fill these positions have on students and their learning experiences.ĭaisy Bennett, a paraprofessional who works at two schools in Orange County, Calif., works with a student at Brea Olinda High School. ![]() The essential workers in schoolsįor district leaders, staffing difficulties add another layer of chaos to the already challenging task of keeping schools running, especially during a pandemic. Some of these shortages are far more severe than usual, while others existed long before the pandemic. Interviews with economists, administrators, and employees reveal a complex array of factors causing the school hiring headaches: Fears over health and safety, frustrations over longstanding pay gaps and inequities, and political disagreements over masks and vaccines. (The data include both K-12 and higher education jobs, but K-12 typically makes up roughly three-quarters of the overall numbers.) The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly tracking of job openings in public education offers a clue, though: More than 446,000 jobs were open in June, and 460,000 in July, compared with less than half those figures at the same point last year. As anecdotes pile up, wide-ranging data on staff shortages in schools remain elusive. ![]()
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