Schools prepare to welcome back students amid ongoing teacher shortage

INDIANAPOLIS—As many school corporations prepare to welcome back students in the next few weeks, many will also be on the lookout for qualified teachers amid an ongoing shortage.

”We’re in full recruitment mode,” Jeff Butts, the Superintendent of MSD Wayne Township, said.

While MSD Wayne Township doesn’t have any large pockets of openings as in years past, Butts said positions in math, science, and special education have been difficult to fill.

”We’re also seeing at this point, and this is the hard part, I think, for school districts across the state: we’re seeing teachers in, that already have jobs, that already have contracts, who are still interviewing in other school districts,” Butts said.

”You cannot talk to an administrator this time of year who is not desperately looking to fill a spot,” Rachel Burke, the Legislative Chair of the Indiana Parent Teacher Association (Indiana PTA) said.

According to Burke, a decade’s worth of legislation targeting schools passed by the Indiana General Assembly is contributing to a statewide teacher shortage.

”Indiana is constantly giving them more hoops to jump through for less real pay,” Burke said.

”We’ve had the conversation about how do we deregulate? How do we take some things off the plate? The problem is, we just can’t identify the things that need to come off the plate because everything’s important,” Butts said.

One such law passed this year requires Pre-K through 5th grade teachers renewing their license to take 80 additional hours of literacy training. The law—an attempt to reverse the state’s declining literacy rates among children—has received much pushback from educators.

”You have a lot of teachers this summer who firmly believe that they are sitting in professional developments that are a waste of their time,” Burke said.

This comes as the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) is in the process of redesigning high school graduation requirements—something Butts said schools could take advantage of amid fewer teachers entering the profession.

”As we look at opportunities for apprenticeships, internships, work-based learning experiences, how might we create a teacher apprenticeship in the MSD of Wayne Township for our students…with an opportunity then to go onto a post-secondary institution maybe just for a year or two because they already completed some of their work while in high school,” Butts said.

The State Board of Education (SBOE) is expected to give an update on the high school diploma redesign process Wednesday, and anticipates all new graduation requirements will fully go into effect by late 2028.

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