With less than a week until the first day of school, Baltimore City Public School System has hired a record number of new teachers, a win in light of an ongoing nationwide teacher shortage.
The district reported it hired 821 new teachers through Tuesday, the most the system has ever brought on during spring hiring. At the Board of Education’s Tuesday night meeting, staff said the number will continue to grow until the first day of school Monday.
Last school year was also a record for new teacher hires, a total of 681 by the first day, Emily Nielson, BCPSS’ chief human capital officer, said during the meeting.
“This year, we haven’t stopped hiring, which has meant we’ve had more people to process, but we think it’s really important that we capture any of the great talent that we find,” Nielson said.
She said the district had teacher 177 vacancies as of Aug. 18, which will require substitute teachers. But that doesn’t translate to 177 substitutes, she said. How many substitutes will be needed to fill those positions remains unclear.
As of Aug. 9, the school system had 227 teacher vacancies, according to BCPSS spokesperson Sherry Christian. The district reported that its number of new teachers had reached 768 for that week. Baltimore City teachers officially returned to work for the fall semester on Monday.
“The district’s hiring numbers lack transparency about the multitude of non-teaching positions in a school, such as school counselors, paraeducators, and academic tutors,” Cristina Duncan Evans, director of education initiatives for the Baltimore Teachers Union, said in an email. “The BTU is concerned at the pace of hiring and processing new teachers — we saw fewer teachers than usual at BCPSS’s weeklong orientation for new educators, and our members are still reaching out to their networks to fill vacancies in their schools. All of these indicators signal that the district will continue with practices like splitting classes to address staffing shortages.”
The teacher shortage is not exclusive to Baltimore nor Maryland. Nationwide, public education job openings have been greater than the number of hires since before the coronavirus pandemic, which only worsened that gap, according to the National Education Association. Compounding the issue is the limited pool of new teachers.
“We’re working hard to make sure that every school has a plan for coverage so that students have classes taught by the adults that they need while we continue to fill these vacancies with new hires,” Nielson said.
In addition to filling teacher vacancies, the school system has yet to complete other items on its to-do list before students return. Per BCPSS staff, the district is 88% finished with cleaning all schools and 85% done replacing air purifiers and ensuring all buildings have air filters.
As for determining students’ academic schedules, 98% of elementary and middle schools are completely scheduled, whereas 85% of high schools are.
BCPSS does not have its own bussing system like most districts, but some city students, such as those participating in special education, do ride a school bus instead of public transportation. City schools staff said about 93% of eligible students have been given routes to their schools so far, and the rest, along with schools, will have their transportation information by Wednesday. Electric buses will be operable before the end of the first semester, according to the school system.
