Teacher Shortage Addressed By Chatham Superintendent

CHATHAM, NJ — Superintendent of Schools Michael LaSusa provided the community with a long-awaited update on the district's ongoing staff shortages at this week's Board of Education meeting.

LaSusa delivered a PowerPoint presentation on the national issue of teacher shortages, outlining reasons why there are fewer teachers in New Jersey and across the country.

Over the last few years, the School District of the Chathams has been publicly confronted with a continuing decline in both teachers and paraprofessionals within the district and has been looking for ways to attract new employees.

According to LaSusa, there has been a significant decline in the number of applicants within the school district over the last few years.

For example, in 2013, the school district received 248 applications for an open math position, whereas in 2022, the district received only 21 applications for the same position. This level of decline was observed in almost every single department within the district.

"What is this going to mean, because it is getting worse and not better because there are fewer kids who are graduating from colleges and universities with teaching certificates. This problem is worsening every year that goes by," LaSusa said.

At a recent board meeting, Caryn Badian, a speech pathologist at the Lafayette School, spoke out to the board, voicing all the negative ways the teacher shortage is affecting teachers in the district.

"We are constantly changing schedules, getting last minute notice to cover classes and expected to continue to achieve at the highest level. We continue to make our students our priority, but please know this is not easy to accomplish from an educational and psychological perspective," Badian said.

LaSusa said that the district is also adapting to new demographics, stating that this year's new hires were "essentially every person we hired was from another school district" due to a lack of applicants fresh out of college.

In the coming years within the School District of the Chathams' LaSusa predicted that certain courses would most likely move to be taught online and that some of those courses might be led by teachers who are not certified in the subject matter.

"It is likely we are not going to be able to continue to staff every single position with someone who is certified in that subject area, at least not all the time, especially in leave replacement situations. It's likely class sizes are going to grow because we don't have enough staff to get to the class size ratio that we might want," LaSusa said.

Teacher and staff shortages have become a common issue in New Jersey, as school districts struggle to recover from pandemic-related staff losses and a dwindling number of new teachers entering the workforce.

In late December, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced the appointment of 23 members to the Task Force on Public School Staff Shortages in New Jersey. The task force's goal is to provide recommendations to increase the number of K-12 school staff in the state, including teachers and support staff.

"Educators play an invaluable role in shaping the lives of their students and ultimately molding our country’s future," said Governor Murphy. "As we emerge from the pandemic, we must recognize the impact that teacher shortages in our state and across the nation will have on our economy, the arts, and our civil society."