MINNEAPOLIS — School administrators across Minnesota are sweating this week, and the weather isn't to blame.
Many districts are still scrambling — and sometimes competing with each other — to fill hundreds of teacher vacancies and even more paraprofessional roles.
"It's higher than normal, for sure," said Scott Croonquist, Executive Director of the Association of Metro School Districts. "What's different this year is the extent of the vacancies, how many there are and how many districts are experiencing them."
According to an open position survey conducted by the Minnesota School Boards Association between Aug. 3-9, schools in the seven-county Twin Cities metro area, were still reporting 519 vacancies and 698 paraprofessional vacancies.
Erdahl: "Do you have any idea how much that gap has closed by now?"
Croonquist: "I think we're still in the several hundreds in terms of shortfalls for teaching positions."
The shortfall appears even more troubling across greater Minnesota. The same survey found rural districts still had 349 teacher vacancies and 571 para vacancies, and more than 60% of those open jobs had zero applicants.
"It's a little unnerving when you don't even see applicants coming in," Croonquist said. "I have no doubt that we're going to see some scrambling, and some tough situations to fill some of those positions."
It's an issue St. Paul Public Schools tried to get out in front of last week, holding a hiring event for paraprofessionals like Teaching Aids and Educational Aids, among others. The effort resulted in more than 60 applicants being offered a job within minutes.
The district credits the unified hiring effort, a jump in starting pay for para positions, and a $4,000 hiring and retention bonus for special education jobs.
"We were probably double this a year ago, in terms of openings for teaching and education assistants," said Anny Xiong, Recruitment and Diversity Specialist for SPPS.
But with dozens of positions yet to fill, SPPS still has work to do, Croonquist says raising pay alone won't fix the bigger, statewide shortage.
"Often times, what is happening is one district is able to fill an opening but it's because they stole someone from another district, so it has sort of this domino effect sometimes," he said. "It's like whack-a-mole.
He says some districts have started to explore a new option offered by the state, which gives some student teachers a chance to fill open teaching jobs.
"They can now actually be hired under a Tier Two license," Croonquist said. "And they basically end up doing their student teaching at the same time they're actually teaching and getting paid for it."
Other districts have also been turning up their recruiting far beyond our state borders.
"All over the country and sometimes even outside of the country," Croonquist said. "Especially if they're going after those world language teachers and native language speakers because they're so hard to find."
Money dedicated by the Minnesota legislature in 2021 is also working on marketing the profession to the next generation and BIPOC candidates, at a time when the pandemic accelerated a long coming wave of retirements.
"There are a lot of positive things happening in the longer term," Croonquist said. "But it takes a while for these new programs to kick in and become effective, and so I'm afraid - for the next year or two — it is going to be a tight, tight crunch."
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