Maryland schools are still missing teachers, but not as many as last year

It looks like Central Maryland schools are filling more teacher jobs this school year.

Two years ago, school systems were missing about 400 to 500 teachers in the weeks leading up to the first day of school, with a particular shortage of special education teachers. The numbers of unfilled teaching positions shrank last year to between 200 and 300. This year’s outlook is the best in recent times.

School systems say raising teacher pay and improving school culture are to thank. However, it’s unclear if last winter’s budget fiasco is contributing to the smaller numbers. Several school systems told The Banner they did not know whether the total number of teaching jobs had dropped since last year.

Balancing budgets was a huge task this past school year, more so than usual. That’s because federal funds for COVID-19 relief were running out, and the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation demanded certain funding priorities. The results were huge budget deficits and tough decisions. Programs were cut and so were teaching positions.

Howard County, for instance, had a budget gap of over $100 million in January before finding a way to balance it out by the spring. But not everything could be saved.

As of Aug. 4, 80 Howard County teacher positions were unfilled for the upcoming school year. It’s an improvement from just a week prior. Ben Schmitt, president of Howard’s teachers union, said there were 131 openings on July 29. The system employed about 4,300 teachers last year.

Schmitt said the national teacher shortage has contributed to the lack of staff, but so have the budget cuts.

“Unfortunately, I don’t always feel that people see the two are related,” he said.

Staffing special education is one of the biggest issues. The district said that of the 80 vacancies, 56 were special education positions. The system added 52 new special education positions to the budget and Schmitt wondered how the district plans to fill them, since many of those educators have left due to burnout.

Baltimore County made tough budget decisions as well. The district avoided layoffs but 500 positions were cut, most of them vacant. In February, Superintendent Myriam Rogers said there were 130 vacancies in the middle and high schools.

As of Aug. 7, 153 unfilled teacher positions remained, the school system reported. Baltimore County employed about 7,500 teachers last year, according to the state department of education. Rogers said last winter the system would soon start reporting the numbers of staff and students in real-time.

Baltimore City school officials said they do not provide teacher vacancy numbers until the first day of school. However, Diamonte Brown said she knows the system, which had more than 5,100 teachers last year, is not fully staffed. But Brown isn’t interested in the vacancy numbers. She wants to know what the system is doing to fill them, like helping the many long-term substitute teachers get licensed so they can take permanent jobs.

Anne Arundel County reported needing 120 teachers as of Aug. 6, a drop from 400 about two years ago. The district said it escaped some of the budget strife seen elsewhere in the state.

“We are fortunate in that we are able to continue to add positions to a growing school system at a time when other districts are finding it necessary to cut staff,” said Bob Mosier, spokesperson for Anne Arundel County Public Schools.

The Maryland State Department of Education reported in May that unfilled teacher positions on the first day of school dropped 9.8% from 2022 to 2023.

It’s too soon to know how Maryland’s numbers compare to the rest of the nation for the upcoming school year, said Susan Patrick of the Learning Policy Institute. Not all districts have reported those numbers yet. However, Patrick and her colleagues reviewed vacancy numbers in 30 states and Washington, D.C., finding that Maryland had more unfilled teacher jobs last year than Missouri and South Carolina, states that employed a similar number of teachers.

The Maryland State Department of Education points to the Blueprint education reform legislation as the reason for the staffing improvements.

The Blueprint mandates raising starting teacher salaries to $60,000 by July 2026, placing teachers on track to be leaders and incentivizing them to become national board certified, which comes with a pay bump of as much as $17,000.

Since the certification incentive, “there has been a dramatic increase in the number of program participants,” the state reported.

Shamoyia Gardiner, executive director of Strong Schools Maryland, a Blueprint advocacy group, was heartened by the staffing improvements. She said if not for the Blueprint, “Maryland would be in a worse situation.”

But that work, she said, needs to be sustained.

“Great things can be done with the Blueprint, but the Blueprint is not fully funded,” she said. “We need to be thinking about generating revenue, being sustainable, investing in people, directing dollars properly and essentially keeping the promise that was made when the Blueprint was passed.”