How SC school districts and universities are curbing the teacher shortage

As she closed out her second year of teaching, Sterling School third grade teacher Candace Coffman worked on cleaning out her classroom.

In between organizing and filling boxes, she said what she's enjoyed most about working in Greenville County is how supportive the school district is.

Coffman is looking forward to the next school year and is one of many teachers returning to Sterling School. Even though the district as a whole currently has around 300 teaching positions open, Sterling School has only one position open.

Sterling School Principal Josh Patterson supporting their teachers in any way they can has helped with their retention rate.

"We have done what I felt like we could do to just minimize the amount of time that we're expecting them to gather and meet, so that they can then get to their lesson planning and communicating with parents and families and all the other things that have to occur," Patterson said.

While teacher shortages have affected school districts within the state, some worse than others, districts in the Upstate have not been hit as hard, in large part because of partnerships between local districts and area colleges and universities.

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Greenville County's teacher openings not alarming

While the number of teacher openings for the Greenville County School District seems alarming, GCSD spokesperson Tim Waller said the number is typical and proportionate to the number of the students the district serves.

“A lot of those that we're talking about is due to attrition we have. We have a lot of retiring teachers, others are added positions,” Waller said.

Greenville County serves approximately 77,000 students and is the largest school district in the state. The next largest school district is Charleston County which is 54% smaller with approximately 49,000 students.

In addition to being the largest school district, Greenville County has the highest salary for teachers in the state starting at $42,515. Recently the Greenville County Schools board of trustees approved a budget to increase that salary by $2,000.

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“It's just such a desirable part of the country. Secondly, Greenville County School District is a desirable district,” Waller said.

“We're the highest paying district in the state, we have more steps on the teacher scale than the state-required number of steps. We've added steps that are exclusive to Greenville County, meaning more pay.”

How area universities are helping

Colleges and universities are also doing their part to help ease the shortage by addressing it on both ends: recruitment and retention.

Clemson University, Anderson University and Furman University all have a residency program for senior education majors allowing them to spend their last year inside an actual classroom teaching within a school district that the college partners with.

Furman University education professor Scott Henderson emphasized the importance of serving the community by providing ready-to-work teachers for the district.

"Furman is a relatively significant pipeline. In other words, a significant number of our students go from our program into teaching positions in the Upstate or in Upstate public school districts," Henderson said.

During the residency, the students will not only teach in the classroom but receive mentorship from a practicing teacher within the district.

The schools also have some form of a teacher cadet program that recruits high school students in their junior and senior years. It allows them to earn college credit while learning hands-on classroom and teaching skills.

Both programs are designed to help prepare students as they navigate their way to the classroom and retain teachers after their first year.

Proven to be a success, enrollment for education studies has gone up at Clemson.

Michelle Cook, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Education at Clemson University said that the school saw a 50% increase in its enrollment in the teacher education programs.

"I think a lot of that growth is just that we've tried to be really intentional about how to address the teacher shortage," Cook said.

"And so obviously, we're trying to recruit more students into the teaching profession. But we recognize that recruiting isn't going to be the end all be all because we've got this back end issue in the districts where they don't stay. And certainly, a lot of new teachers don't stay past five years. And so we're also trying to look at the retention side as well."

How Anderson County benefits from its connection with Anderson University

Approximately 40 miles southwest of Greenville County, Anderson County School District 3, a much smaller district has no openings for the upcoming school year. District 3 spokesperson Dylan McCullough said the retention rate contributed to the lack of vacancies.

“I would say our retention rate is probably higher than some.  I mean we have smaller class sizes and I would say that's a big appeal for us this year,” McCullough said.

Though there was some turnover during the pandemic, most of the open positions going into the past school year were due to adding new positions.

When it comes to recruitment, McCullough said the district heavily relies a lot on its partnership with Anderson University.

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“This past year we actually had three teacher interns. So they were actually seniors at AU that instead of doing their last year of student teaching in the classroom with another teacher, they did their last year as a full-time teacher in our district,” he said.

“All three of those were great, great candidates. Matter of fact, two of them are going to be staying with us next year.”

Over in Anderson County School District 5, Kyle Newton said that the district has a higher number of teacher openings than usual.

“We probably had a few more leave the district and a few more retire and it's been rough with COVID. I think that's kind of driving the numbers,” Newton said.

He noted that in the past teachers were more likely to teach for a few more years after they were eligible to retire, but is seeing more teachers retire when they're eligible.

While Cook, Henderson, Waller and McCullough have all said that the districts and universities maintain constant communication with one another to fill anticipated needs, Patterson added that he's encouraged about what lies ahead for the profession.

"I'm hopeful that we're gonna see very bright days for the profession."

Alexis Hamilton is a Beaufort, SC native covering higher education in the Upstate. Reach her at 727-514-5734 or ahamilton@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: How South Carolina school districts, colleges curb teacher shortage