This year the back-to-school jitters aren’t just hitting students, but school district leaders too. That’s because across the state schools are dealing with massive teacher shortages and vacancies for dozens of other positions. Many districts say this year is the worst they’ve seen it, like in Chatham, a district that easily attracted candidates in the past. When it came to the end of the summer and Chatham still had open positions, it ended up filling them with existing teachers, who now have to take on the additional workload. But that’s kept them from having to increase class sizes.
“We have elongated schedules to the maximum extent per the contract; we have used substitutes; we’ve actually brought in substitutes who are hired to report every day. So all of those things combined have taken the edge off, but certainly, it’s not an ideal situation,” said Beth Grant, manager of human resources in School District of the Chathams.
A similar strategy is being used to cover the 117 open positions in Paterson.
