Teacher vacancies in Polk and around state worsened by stalled teacher certifications

Arrin Brunson had signed on to teach for Polk County Public Schools only to arrive for pre-planning duties on Aug. 3 to find out her pay would only be $15 per hour without benefits.

After moving from Utah, she had signed a teacher’s contract in Polk, but because her certification paperwork has been log-jammed in Tallahassee at the Florida Department of Education, she was told she would have to accept lower pay until that process was ironed out.

So instead of accepting $15 per hour, she quit on the spot.

As students return to classrooms at Polk County Public Schools on Friday, the district is again scrambling to fill hundreds of open positions.

On Wednesday, the careers page on the Polk schools website showed 562 openings for everything from administrative staff to teachers to custodians. Of those listings about 350 are instructional, according to the Polk Education Association, the local teachers union.

Last year, with days to go until the start of that school, there were 428 job openings.

“Virtually all school districts have vacancies for teachers and bus drivers,” said Kyle Kennedy, senior coordinator of media relations and public relations. “We have been hiring throughout the summer and will continue to recruit during the year.”

“We will be ready for the start of school on Friday,” Kennedy said.

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A problem statewide

Statewide, the Florida Education Association surveys K-12 educator vacancies each August and January, compiling the number of advertised vacancies using job openings listed on school district websites. There are 69 school districts in Florida.

FEA first began counting advertised vacancies for teachers in August 2016, when there were 2,400 open teaching positions listed statewide on websites.

By 2021, FEA was counting vacancies for both teachers and support staff. In August 2021, on the eve of a new school year, there were nearly 9,000 vacancies for the two groups, 4,961 for teachers and 3,753 for support staff.

In August 2022, the FEA tallied 10,771 advertised vacancies, 6,006 for teachers and 4,765 for support staff, which includes teacher aides, Exceptional Student Education and English for Speakers of Other Languages paraprofessionals, bus drivers, food-service staff, custodians and other essential employees.

According to Kennedy, at last count in March 2023, Polk schools had approximately 114,700 students, including charter schools. PCPS has roughly 100,000 students.

Teachers are still being added to the school system and additional instructional positions were added for this school year because of the county's rapid population growth, he said.

"In normal conditions, we typically have 200+ vacancies out of a workforce of about 7,000 teachers," Kennedy said in an email.

'Bait and switch'?

To Brunson, it shouldn't be this way. She called the move by a district within Florida’s public school system akin to “bait and switch.” She also wondered about the hardships endured by her colleagues who could not afford to walk out and then decided to contact the media to draw attention to the issue.

“They are working 10 to 12 hours a day to develop curriculum and plan a whole year, but sub pay doesn't cover any work, except the eight hours between the start and end of the school day,” she wrote in an email to The Ledger.

“I suspect this is happening to all new teachers in the state of Florida,” Brunson said. She said an email from the district indicated, to her, that “this contract pay and benefits delay is standard operating procedure here in Florida.”

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The district email said, “While waiting for the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) to evaluate your file, our office will move forward with clearing the certification portion of your onboarding as a provisional substitute to prevent further impact to your start date.

“This temporary employment designation will be modified once FDOE has completed the evaluation of your file and issued a Statement of Status of Eligibility (SOE), deeming you eligible for a teaching certificate,” said the email from a district certification specialist.

Stephanie Yocum, president of the PEA, laid the blame on the Department of Education.

“This is a direct result of a bureaucratic entity that has been taken over by the Governor’s Office, and they can’t keep staff. It used to be DOE staff would stay for 20, 30 years,” Yocum said.

The FDOE did not respond to an email Wednesday requesting further details about the issue impacting teachers such as Brunson.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk teacher vacancies worsened by stalled teacher certifications