Officials at several school districts in Texas are traveling to Mexico to interview potential teacher candidates to meet the growing demand.

The ‘Exchange Teachers’ Visiting International Teacher Program was approved by the ESC-2 Board of Directors in December 2021.

District officials in South Texas are conducting interviews in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.

“There are 65 candidates available right now. It does not mean we are going to use all 65, it’s just what the district is needing at this time,” said ESC-2 Associate Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Accountability, Dr. Daniel Ceballos.

District leaders say COVID-19 exacerbated the demand for educators. The need goes beyond teachers in core subjects like math and science.

“Now it’s really English teachers, special ed teachers, bilingual teachers, those are in high demand,” said Kingsville ISD Superintendent Dr. Cissy Reynolds-Perez.

“There may be potential other vacancies, because usually about May or April is when people start deciding if they are going to retire or not and so we just need to have a pool ready to make sure that we can fill those vacancies quickly and easily.”

Region 2 directors are looking forward to bringing highly qualified candidates into the classrooms through this specialized partnership.

“Making sure that all the shortages positions are taken care of, I think it’s going to be important not only to the teachers but the kids and the communities there,” said Dr. Ceballos.

“And what a better way than to have somebody also, an international teacher that comes in to also learn about the different culture as well, I think it’s an added benefit.”

This story was originally reported by Reyna Rodriguez at KRIS in Corpus Christi, Texas.

MADISON, N.H. — With the kind of care a mom takes raising her own children, Heather Woodard approaches lunchtime at Madison Elementary School in Madison, New Hampshire, knowing her students can't learn if they're hungry.

“You have to feed them. If you don’t have one piece of the puzzle, you don’t have school,” Woodard said as she worked to serve out the day’s lunch, macaroni and cheese made from scratch.

While she loves the cafeteria rush, this is not Heather Woodard's full-time job.

She is better known around Madison Elementary as Principal Woodard.

“It’s who I am. I wouldn’t ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do,” Woodard explained as she scooped out a helping of apples to a hungry student.

Schools across the country are facing severe staffing shortages. Teachers and staff are pinch-hitting in whatever positions they need to. When a cafeteria worker called out sick on a recent Wednesday morning, the only option was for Principal Woodard to step in.

After all, she knows her students have to be fed.

“Everyone just does what they need to do,” she added.

Madison Elementary is part of SAU 13 in northern rural New Hampshire. Superintendent Michael Whaland oversees the district and is facing staffing shortages like he’s never seen.

“It’s just putting more weight on the collective shoulders of our educators. I think it’s just a really tough time to get into education right now,” Whaland said as he looked over a stack of job vacancies sitting on his desk.

The quiet of rural communities like this one is only making matters worse. Fewer residents live here compared to most major urban areas, which generates lower tax revenues for the district meaning school budgets are stretched thin.

The average starting salary for a teacher in this district is about $40,000, which is even higher than most state averages.

For Superintendent Whaland, teacher retention though isn't just about pay. It's about finding someone who truly loves living in rural America.

“Do you love that lifestyle? Because it’s a life and work balance and if you can find someone like that, they’re going to stay. If not, our turnover rate becomes incredibly high,” he noted.

With the school year well underway, Whaland is looking at a number of teaching positions going unfilled. He even has one school operating without a principal.

“When those positions aren’t filled, it’s tough. We’re doing the same amount of work with less staff, ultimately something’s gotta give,” he noted.

A perfect storm of variables has left educational staffing shortages at historic highs. Many teachers retired early in the last two years for fear of catching COVID-19. Historically, low pay is also drying up the pipeline of educators currently in school looking to get into the profession.

Kim Anderson with the National Education Association and is worried this trend will only continue if federal action isn’t taken quickly.

“We’ve got to invest in the adults that care for students on a daily basis,” she said.

Between 2016 and 2026, more than 270,000 public school teachers are projected to leave the profession. One in three teachers says COVID-19 has made them more likely to retire early.

To address the issue, the Biden administration is proposing the American Families Plan. The legislation would allocate $9 billion to address the teacher shortage. That money would help to train, equip and diversify the nation's teachers.

“These educators are going above and beyond the call of duty and if we don’t take care of them we’ll see this pipeline of educators dry up,” Anderson added.

No need to tell that to Heather Woodard, the principal at Madison Elementary School. The rural school of 130 students is short two positions. School only started a month ago and the staff there is already tired.

“Right now, it feels more stressed. People didn’t have time to decompress this summer like we usually would,” Heather Woodard said as she worked to take off her apron and head back to her office.

But like schools across the country, Madison Elementary is doing whatever they can to make sure their students are being served up the best education possible.

COLUMBIA, SC. — A nationwide teacher shortage is deepening, and many teachers said the pandemic is a major reason why they left the profession they once loved.

Almost half of the teachers who quit in 2020, 44%, reported the pandemic was the main reason they left. They say it magnified existing stressors and added new ones.

Sixty-four percent didn’t feel they were being paid enough to offset the newfound duties, stress, and risk. One fifth said stress alone was what drove them to quit.

Jodi Chumley taught elementary school in South Carolina for more than three decades. She decided to retire last year after COVID-19 made her already time-consuming job overwhelming.

“Last year was something else, and it was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Chumley. “I would take it home every single solitary night. The only night I refused to work was Saturday, and this is not just me, this is everyone on my team.”

Chumley said the pandemic made the job more stressful worrying about health and safety, but there was also more stress in trying to make sure students learned critical reading and math skills remotely.

She agonized over her decision to leave. “I would teach for less, I think, because I love the profession if I weren’t so stressed all the time to get things done,” she said. “I hate it, and it’s really sad because I loved teaching, but I didn’t have a life.”

Chumley’s case hints at a bigger trend around the country – including in South Carolina. Sherry East is a teacher and the President of the South Carolina Education Association, and said the shortage is becoming more and more dire every day. “We don’t have a shortage of students, we have a shortage of everyone else. There’s really more than one issue here to tackle this problem, but we really need to get on it now, because there’s students in the classroom now that don’t have a certified teacher in front of them,” said East.

The state started last school year with 700 open teaching positions. It left an estimated 14,000 students without a certified teacher on the first day of school.

Then, between October 2020 and February 2021, about 170 teachers quit each month, statewide.

The stress driving teachers out isn’t expected to get any better this year.

Patrick Kelly, the Director of Governmental Affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association said he’s worried this is only going to get worse in the next few months.

“Unfortunately, morale is really low among teachers right now. There's no other way to slice it. The teachers that are remaining, they've got additional burdens on them, the burdens that come with understaffed schools,” said Kelly.

He said he is shocked to hear what teachers are having to do outside the classroom just to keep their schools running. “There are teachers in South Carolina right now that are being asked to drive bus routes in the morning because districts can't find a enough bus drivers, they're being asked to pitch in in the cafeteria because we can't find enough cafeteria workers, to help clean the school after the day because we don't have enough staff in our custodial services. They're taking on larger class sizes because we can't find enough certified staff.”

Kelly said stress, low pay and lack of respect will continue to wear on teachers this school year.

“What we found was four consistent factors teachers leave the profession because of: a lack of respect, a lack of time, a lack of adequate support and inadequate compensation. It's always those four,” said Kelly.

The pandemic only added an extra layer to that conversation. “Now, for some reason, in the eyes of too many members of the public, they're the villain and very few people want to do this job and be the villain,” said Kelly.

Without urgent action, Kelly said he worries these waves of resignations will have long term consequences beyond the classroom.

“I think the most important thing for people to realize about this teacher shortage is that if we don't take urgent action now, it will continue to get worse and it will diminish our economic capacity. It will diminish our national security. It will diminish the opportunities available to our children,” he said.

Kelly said there are three solutions that could help keep teachers in classrooms: smaller class sizes, more trust and support from districts, and protection against harassment and disrespect.

He said helping keep the teachers we have now can start with something as simple as support from families and students, even if it’s with words of encouragement.