SPRINGFIELD – When Gretchen Weiss applied for a teaching position at Macomb Middle School in west-central Illinois more than 20 years ago, the school’s policy was to keep applications on file for only a year due to the large volume of applicants.
That is no longer the case. Now, applications are kept on file indefinitely, Weiss said.
Macomb and other smaller schools in rural Illinois are seeing firsthand the effects of a persistent statewide educator shortage. Though school districts are coping with the crisis through creative alternative measures, teachers and education leaders said they might only work in the short term.
A recent survey of the state’s educators by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, or IARSS, looks at the impact of the ongoing teacher shortage where 87% of education leaders in the state indicated a “minor, serious or very serious (shortage) problem” for the 2024-25 school year. That includes 83% of districts in west-central Illinois.
“Schools and districts that serve more students from low-income households, more bilingual students and more students of color are more likely to be dealing with more significant vacancies. And I think this report is a reminder of that,” said Robin Steans, president of Advance Illinois, an advocacy organization working to promote the Illinois public education system.
At Carbondale High School where roughly half of the student population are minorities, finding teachers who look like the students is part of the challenge.
“Some folks in our building — who work as paraprofessionals and support staff, who want to become teachers, who are more representative of our community and as far as their demographics — are having trouble finding those opportunities, those pipelines into teaching,” said assistant principal Tyler Chance. “Right now, we’re looking at hiring a Spanish teacher, which is hard to find in a rural area.”
Ninety percent of school leaders in rural Illinois reported none or very few applicants for open positions, according to the study, released Monday. Bilingual teachers, English as a Second Language instructors and special education teachers are among the state’s top unfilled positions this year.
Short-term solutions
Roughly 3,864 positions across Illinois are unfilled this school year, while 6,117 positions were filled through alternative solutions. From hiring retirees to shortening the teacher pathway, Illinois schools are easing the effects of the crisis in their own ways.
A special education reading, language arts and theatre teacher in the Macomb school district, Weiss said she’s thankful to have veteran teachers return to Macomb from retirement to help guide newer teachers.
“Those teachers know the ins and outs of the district and are really good in their field,” Weiss said. “We’re lucky that those retired teachers act in that capacity… because it’s a tough job and if you don’t have the support, it would be easy to see why someone would be like, ‘I think I’m going to do something else.’”
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Speeding up the licensing process is another way Illinois schools are tackling the shortage. Short-term credentials have allowed teachers to teach new subjects and grade levels without having to complete the traditional coursework or earn the Professional Educator License (PEL), a requirement for Illinois teachers, according to the 2023 Teacher Pipeline report by Advance Illinois.
Though most short-term approvals allow licensed educators to teach in grade levels and subject areas in which they are not yet endorsed, the Content Knowledge Pathway, a new type of short-term approval, allows non-PEL holders to teach for up to three years, the report said.
For the 2021-22 school year, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, 1.5 percent of all Illinois teachers held short-term approvals, which might require educators to have a PEL. That’s up from just 0.1 percent in the 2017-18 school year.
But Chance said these alternatives seem like “band aids” when the prolonged teacher shortage needs to be addressed with “longer term care.”
“I think policy-wise, the big rush is to open doors for folks to get into teaching quickly, and that’s one of the doors I stepped through — Teach for America,” Chance said. “But some of it needs to be the long game. We need to make sure that teaching is a valued profession, that it has the community respect it used to have.”
He added, “We need to make sure that we have a diverse teacher workforce … that teachers are paid well and that’s the long game and harder solutions, rather than online programs that people can complete quickly.”
Teaching as “a calling”
Seventeen years ago, in his first year of teaching, Joe Brewer was “coaching every sport full time” on top of making overhead projectors at night due to the lack of technological advancement at his old school in Fulton County. Brewer said it was how teachers like him could make ends meet.
Currently a dean at Beardstown Community Unit School District, Brewer still works additional hours after school, teaching GED courses two nights a week.
To Brewer, teaching isn’t just about the pay.
“That’s just the water we swim,” he said. “I view (teaching) as a calling, but that’s problematic, because we have to live our life.”
Due to the long hours at work, Brewer jokingly said he raised his two sons through the “Ring camera.”
“Maybe it’s helping me fill a financial gap to make some ends meet, but it does come at a cost of spending that quality time,” he said.
For veteran educators like Brewer, having space to grow professionally is one of the ways school districts can retain educators amidst the shortage. He believes rural areas can offer a sense of community that supports teachers in their profession.
“This is where rural schools can lead the way because our best asset is our social capital — we know everybody,” Brewer said. “We can be really easily connected in our community in a way that we don’t have to hustle.”
Weiss echoed Brewer’s sentiments.
When she first earned her teaching certificate from Western Illinois University, Weiss had plans to teach in a big city, but now she’s glad she was “willing to give a rural area a shot.”
“Here I am 30 years later,” Weiss said. “This is a place that very quickly feels like home.”
Jessie Nguyen is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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