Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to outline the ongoing teacher shortage across states ahead of the school year, vacancies and job retentions in education positions, and teacher benefits.

Video Transcript

- Students across the country are heading back to school, but many without adequate teachers. According to the National Education Association, there are more than 280,000 fewer public school teachers nationally than prior to the pandemic. And the shortage is perhaps most acute in the state of Florida, where they're an estimated 8,000 teachers short.

Andrew Spar is the president of the Florida Education Association. He joins us now. Good to see you, sir. Really appreciate you coming on and talking about the situation. What are the implications for the system in Florida, and most importantly, for the students?

ANDREW SPAR: First, thanks for having me here. And, yeah, there's lots of implications. For example, in Orlando, Florida, right now, they don't have enough bus drivers. So they're doubling routes, meaning kids are having to be picked up early in the morning, brought to school, having to wait before the school day so that another route can be run to bring more kids to that school.

Or another school district today actually had 20 and 30-minute delays for their middle school, the last runs they did, because they just don't have enough bus drivers. In the classroom, my own daughter, last year, in seventh grade, her science teacher quit in the middle of the year, saying that she wasn't willing to sacrifice her small family anymore for when she can't even teach the kids the way they're supposed to be taught.

And so she walked away from the profession after 12 years. They couldn't find another science teacher, which means my daughter and 99 other students this teacher taught didn't get the education they deserve and need in science last year. So these are real ramifications by not having fully-staffed schools to support every child who comes into our classrooms.

- And, Andrew, one thing that Governor DeSantis has announced that he is doing is recruiting veterans to teach in classrooms in an effort to address this teacher shortage. Let's play a quick clip of what he had to say about this.

RON DESANTIS: Our veterans have a wealth of knowledge and experience they can bring to bear in the classroom. And with this innovative approach, they will be able to do so for five years with a temporary certification as they work towards their degree.

- So, Andrew, they have a temporary certification, not a full certification. First, just your reaction to what we just heard from the governor.

ANDREW SPAR: So, first of all, I appreciate our veterans. I think we all do and honor them for the work in service that they have done to our country, keeping us safe, and protecting our freedoms.

But let's be honest here. This doesn't really get at the root of the problem. As a parent, as other parents as well, we want to make sure that we have fully-trained, fully-credentialed teachers in our classroom with the experience and support they need to teach every child. This idea of shortcutting that process doesn't work. It never has.

And let's face it-- right now, there are veterans who do come into our schools through the traditional process and become teachers. But you can't just say because someone has been in the military, or someone has been in a classroom, even, that makes them a highly-qualified teacher. It takes skill, it takes training, and it takes a desire to be there.

And if you're constantly maligning teachers and staff who work in our schools, if you're underpaying them, underresourcing them, then they're not going to stay. And that's what we're seeing here in the state of Florida.

- And we'll circle back to the root of the problem. But, Andrew, if I could just follow up on the veterans, are there an abundance of veterans in this situation in Florida that are willing to teach? And have you heard any reaction from veterans' groups?

ANDREW SPAR: So I have not heard of veterans being lined up, wanting to come into the teaching profession. I have not heard of anyone right now lining up to come into the teaching profession right now. I mean, in fact, since 2010, we went from 8,000 graduates in Florida's colleges and universities who wanted to be teachers down to about 2 or 3,000 this year.

That's a major issue. We don't have people coming into the profession. And that's what we need to do.

We need to encourage more people to come into teaching. We need to encourage those who have left. There are lots of certified teachers in the state of Florida who have walked away. We've got to get them to come back to the profession and come back into our classrooms. That's the best way to solve the challenge we have right now.

- Well, Andrew, how do we get them to come back? What's the answer there?

ANDREW SPAR: Well, I think it's twofold, right? One, we have to pay teachers more. In Florida, we have what is known as the experience tax. There are actually 20 different laws and rules that govern teacher pay that are chasing people out of the profession that are working against teachers who have experience. We call it the experience penalty.

Two, we have to show respect. When the governor goes around the state maligning and vilifying teachers on a daily basis, it hurts the profession. It chases people out. We've got to get those great teachers to come back, and we can't do it unless we all work together, lift up the teachers and the staff who work in our schools, and pay them a respectable wage.

- There, of course, is a national teacher shortage. I mentioned the 280,000 fewer than we started with prior to the pandemic. You're suggesting that your governor is doing things that is chasing away teachers. We are seeing this problem in all 50 states. It may be most acute in Florida, but clearly, it's not solely a political issue.

ANDREW SPAR: No, look, it really-- it is a political issue in the sense that politicians make the policy. And the policy in a lot of our states lately has been a policy that has maligned teachers and people who work in our schools. It has been underfunding and underresourcing our schools. And these are the consequences of those decisions that have been made, really, for the past 10 or 20 years.

We've got to get out of that realm of thinking and get into the possibility of actually empowering educators, trusting educators. You know, we look at other countries around the world. We're often compared to other countries around the world-- Finland, for example-- where they actually value and respect teachers. They pay them a decent wage, they give them control over the classroom, and they trust them as professionals.

That's a concept that really came from the United States, but we haven't implemented it here. Let's do that together. We can do so much more to support our teachers and staff and our schools to ensure that sacred bond between teachers and parents to make sure that every child is getting the education they deserve and need.

- Andrew, if these changes aren't made, how much worse do you think the situation could potentially get? And the current situation that we're in now, how long do you think it's going to take to hopefully correct it?

ANDREW SPAR: Look, a few things, right? Last year, there were approximately 4,000 teacher-- or 5,000 teacher vacancies at the beginning of the school year-- this year, 8,000. So there's a big jump. We've been seeing this steady increase, but a jump like what we're seeing this year is unheard of.

So we've got to act and act quickly. So, first of all, I encourage everyone-- there's a primary election happening in Florida in a little over a week. I encourage everyone to ask anyone running for office, whether it's school board, state house, state Senate, or the governor's race, ask them, what are they doing to address the massive teacher and staff shortage?

If they don't talk about increasing funding, if they don't talk about increasing resources and support for our teachers and staff, and if they don't talk about encouraging young people to go into the profession and really changing how we do business in public education in the state of Florida, then don't vote for them.

- Andrew Spar, we really appreciate you taking the time, Florida Education Association President. We hope to have you back here in the future-- certainly an important story that we will keep monitoring here at Yahoo Finance.