It’s January, the middle of the school year, and yet tenth grader Lala Bivens is preparing for her first day at a new school.

Bivens started fall classes at One City Preparatory Academy, a new charter middle and high school in Madison, Wisconsin, but on January 13 a teacher shortage forced the school to shut down classes for more than 60 9th and 10th graders, including Bivens, who then had to switch schools.

“Teachers were just dropping like flies,” she told CNN.

Since the beginning of the school year, Bivens says she lost her math, chemistry and history teachers. The charter school’s CEO, Kaleem Caire, tells CNN the school lost “five core academic teachers” since the high school opened last fall.

On the second day of school, the Academy lost a humanities teacher. Then, four weeks later, a math teacher resigned. The school would lose three more teachers throughout the fall.

“We have quite a few students who are behind academically, the teachers found it hard, and some teachers came on not knowing how hard it was,” Caire told CNN by phone.

In addition to having to deal with low pay, high student-to-teacher ratios, poor working conditions, post-pandemic learning loss, school shootings and social or emotional issues with students, teachers across the nation are also grappling with culture wars over what they can and cannot teach in the classroom.

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Despite a national recruitment effort, Caire says he could not fill the open positions at the school. “Competition is intense. There are 16 school districts in this area.”

By the time Caire made the decision to shut down classes at the school for ninth and tenth graders, he had been filling in as a math teacher while other teachers at the school were teaching more than one class at a time.

The charter school helped Bivens and 61 other students scramble to find new schools midsemester. After a week of missed classes, Bivens’ mother was able to successfully enroll her at a local public high school.

It’s not just Wisconsin

What’s playing out in Madison is the worst-case scenario of a national teacher shortage gone unchecked.

Department of Education data shows 47 states have reported teacher shortages this school year with the problem being most acute in urban and rural areas. Meanwhile, desperate state legislatures are passing laws making it easier to become a public schoolteacher by lowering or eliminating certain qualifications.

The National Council On Teacher Quality told CNN that over the last two years, 23 states have lowered teacher qualification requirements for beginning teachers. That includes lowering or removing assessment tests designed to determine whether teachers have a firm grasp on the subject they will teach and creating emergency teaching certificates to expedite candidates into the classroom without a teaching degree.

Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma have created new pathways for people without a bachelor’s degree to teach in classrooms.

“Making it easier to become a teacher is an overly broad, short-term solution to staffing challenges that amounts to saying we just need ‘warm bodies’ in classrooms. It’s harmful to students and insulting to the teaching profession,” said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington, D.C., think tank that researches and evaluates teacher quality nationwide.

Linda Darling Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, an education research and policy advocacy group, says state efforts to repeal teacher qualification requirements will only exacerbate the teacher shortage.

“When states respond to shortages by reducing standards rather than increasing salaries and improving working conditions, what they’re doing is creating a vicious cycle. They get people in who are underprepared. Those people leave at two to three times the rate of those who have come in with preparation.”

Hammond says at the same time the quality of education for students suffers. “You’re undermining student achievement.”

A Band-aid on a gaping wound

Since Florida opened teaching roles to veterans without a bachelor’s degree last August, the initiative has only netted the state 11 new teachers, according to the state’s education department, raising the question of whether lowering standards is an effective solution to the shortages.

Florida’s Department of Education denies that there’s a teacher shortage and instead says, “The purpose of this new pathway was to value the unique experience military service provides while simply offering additional time for these veterans to obtain a bachelor’s degree and other requirements to receive a full professional educator certification.”

Back in Madison, Superintendent Dr. Carlton Jenkins’ school district will absorb most students transferring from One City Preparatory Academy, despite his district dealing with its own teacher shortage.

“I know our staff is amazing and they do magical type work but it’s still a challenge that will eventually bring stress on the staff here.”

“We have to try to make sure that what they learned aligns with what we are getting ready to teach. We don’t want the regression to happen,” he added.

But the learning loss he fears may have already begun.

“When I didn’t have enough teachers in my classes it was very hard because we didn’t really learn anything,” Bivens tells CNN.

Michael Jones, president of the Madison Teachers Inc. union told CNN, “We need to change the way public schools view educators as a never-ending supply of energetic martyrs and treat them more like the professionals they are and that we expect for our children.”

Kimberly Walkes, Bivens mother, says when she sent her daughter to school, she always assumed there would be enough teachers on staff to teach, so she was surprised when she learned that was not the case at her daughter’s school.

“You set your child up for greatness and they have so many great opportunities and to hear that was no longer being afforded to her, it broke my heart and brought me to tears," she said.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Sept. 11 is an important topic in classrooms across America leading up to the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

Over time, teachers' classrooms have become filled with students who were not alive in 2001. In fact, more than a quarter of Americans were not yet born when the attacks happened.

"We have students now who have no lived memory of it, and from what teachers reported, very little information about it and in some cases, sort of misinformation or misunderstandings of it," said University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Jeremy Stoddard.

Stoddard has researched how 9/11 is being taught in schools. He helped lead a survey asking teachers what they think could be done better when teaching about the attacks.

Stoddard found in many schools, Sept. 11 is often only talked about around the anniversary and lessons don't go beyond the events and heroism of the day.

“We learn from the past to avoid some of the mistakes in the future, and frankly we’re not very good at that, partly because we tend to simplify, U.S. history in particular, into sort of this story of freedom and progress," Stoddard said.

While it's important to talk about the lives lost and the heroism of the day, Stoddard says lessons need to contain more historical context and look into what led up to the attacks and examine the impact 9/11 has had on the world today.

"Really thinking through, what is the goal of 9/11? One of the dangers of the sort of simple, collective memory issue or story around it, is when it comes to things like leaving Afghanistan, or the proposed Muslim travel ban from a couple of years ago, you can only really understand that thoroughly by understanding the context of 9/11," Stoddard said.

Stoddard is one of the people behind a website that provides resources to teachers that can be used in lessons about the 9/11 attacks.

The coronavirus is continuing its grip in southern states. As Florida made up nearly 1 in 5 new COVID-19 cases in the country last week, the virus claimed the lives of several educators in Broward County ahead of the first day of school.

The Broward Teachers Union said two teachers and a teacher's assistant, all of whom worked at elementary schools, in their 40s, died within 24 hours of each other this week. They were not infected at school, as doors were not yet open.

"Wonderful, very charismatic, just a special woman. Just positive all the time. Always looking out for her colleagues and, as I said, a union leader," said Anna Fusco, the union president, of one she knew personally.

The union said a fourth person also passed away who was a Broward County Public Schools graduate with close ties to the district through her job.

"The loss of a teacher is a ripple throughout the community. The lives that they touch. The other teachers on their teams. Their schools. It's a huge loss," said Heather Brooks, a parent of two students in the district.

The Florida Education Association said it's counted 15 educators who have died from COVID-19 since July.

"My heart breaks for their families and their students, their communities and that's all we're asking, that we have been provided the safest working environment and learning environment for our students and our staff," said Carole Gauronskas, the Vice President of the FEA.

The association is concerned about the virus' spread as schools start a new year, pointing to vaccines and mitigation measures, including masks.

"We are supposed to do whatever it takes to make sure their environment is a safe environment for learning as well as that for the employee. And right now our hands are tied or have been tied. We've seen several school districts that have bucked the system and are requiring masks with an opt out, but that's one safety feature among many," said Gauronskas.

The deaths in Broward County come as they and Alachua County Public Schools defy the state over mask mandates.

Florida is requiring districts allow parents to "opt out." The state could withhold funding equal to the superintendent and board members' salaries if a district is in violation.

"We're not doing this to get attention or be defiant. We're doing what we feel is best for our community and (to) keep our schools opened," said Jackie Johnson, with Alachua County schools.

The State Board of Education has called an emergency meeting next week to discuss the compliance of both districts.

Florida's governor's office maintains there's no conclusive evidence on the impact of mandating face coverings for kids but suggests anyone working in schools consider getting vaccinated. They note the deaths couldn't have been caused by infections from unmasked kids at school, but said it doesn't diminish the grief from the tragic loss.

"It's important we get vaccinated. They weren't vaccinated. You know, no fault of theirs, they might have had some medical concerns. I'm not quite sure. Social distance. Clean hands. Wash your hands often. If you're not vaccinated, try to get tested. And mask wearing is also a protocol; we were happy that was mandated," said Fusco.

"BCCPTA joins our teachers and the entire BCPS community in mourning the loss of four of our educators to COVID. BCCPTA has been and will continue to advocate for our school district to adhere to CDC guidelines regarding all COVID protocols, including face coverings. Face coverings protect everyone, our children, the adults in the school community and at home. Our primary goal is to keep everyone safe and healthy and diminish the spread of this virus, so that our children can return to a normal school environment, as soon as possible," Burt Miller, the Broward County Council PTA/PTSA president, said in a statement.

Such deaths can impact children in a variety of ways, according to Dr. Daniel Bober, a psychiatrist near Broward County.

"I was treating patients today via Telehealth, kids actually, that were telling me they were afraid to go back to school because some kids aren't going to be wearing masks. They're afraid of getting sick, they're afraid of getting infected, they're afraid of watching their teachers die. So yeah, there's a lot of fear," said Bober.

This story was originally reported by Haley Bull on Newsy.com