Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, the 2023 Kansas Teachers of the year team visited Pittsburg State Tuesday to meet and speak with students wanting to get into the profession. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.
According to an article in US News and World Reportlast fall, more than half of all public schools in the US reported understaffing at the start of this school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department.
Currently, Kansas has a vacancy rate of 1,200 teachers. Missouri has fewer vacancies but about3,800 underqualified teachers statewide in classrooms. On Tuesday, Kansas’s 2023 Teacher of the Year, Brian Skinner, visited Pittsburg State. He says the shortage goes beyond teachers.
“The teacher shortage is real. And not only the teacher shortage but the substitute shortage. The paraeducator shortage those are critical for our profession. They’re educators. They are some of the more undervalued people within the education profession, and they are so vital.”
Skinner has been a Special Education English teacher for ten years in Newton USD 273 and is a part of the Kansas Teachers of the year team traveling throughout Kansas, meeting and giving a presentation to education students. This year’s vision is “Teaching Is What We Make It.” For 89 9 KRPS news, I’m Fred Fletcher-Fierro
