Almost 27% of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ teachers are either not fully licensed or are teaching subjects other than what they’re licensed to teach, according to a report presented at Tuesday’s school board meeting.
That's up from 13.8% in November 2021. The school system's target had been reducing that to 10% by June.
Fully certified teachers are viewed as crucial for improving academic skills and college/career readiness for CMS students. Tuesday’s report is part of the school board’s regular monitoring of “goals and guardrails” that are designed to keep district leaders focused on how students are doing.
The board didn’t discuss those numbers. But when Chief Strategy Officer Beth Thompson talked about planning for the next five years, she said recruiting teachers will be a top priority.
“We’re focused on high-quality teachers in every classroom, and we’re addressing the industry’s historic levels of teacher vacancies,” Thompson said. “We’ll address this with a series of strategies, but a key one is looking at compensation for staff to sustainable levels.”
The report says the shortage of certified teachers in CMS reflects national trends, with too few aspiring teachers graduating from colleges of education to fill vacancies.
Teachers who are not counted as certified include:
- Those who were hired through alternative pathways — such as people who had been working in other professions — and are working toward licensure.
- Unlicensed long-term substitutes who are covering classes.
- Teachers who are certified in a field other than what they’re teaching.
However, CMS has exceeded its target for making sure schools can find substitutes to cover classes. In 2021, not quite 6% of schools had enough subs to cover 70% of the school’s needs. That came as the COVID-19 pandemic shrank the supply of subs, many of whom were retirees worried about the risk of exposure.
The plan called for boosting that to 10% of schools with a substitute fill rate of 70% or higher. This year 48% of schools hit that level. The report attributes the improvement to several factors:
- CMS stopped turning to an outside company to hire subs and created its own programs.
- At the same time, it increased daily pay and added bonuses. CMS now pays $146 a day for certified substitutes and $125 a day for non-certified subs. Subs who take on several assignments per month earn bonuses from $200 to $500, based on the number of classes covered.
- CMS created a “guest teacher” program, which currently provides 531 permanent subs who spend the year at specific schools, filling in where needed.
CMS has used millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 aid to pay for teacher recruitment and retention programs. For instance, it’s the main source of funding for the guest teacher program, and Hill has said she plans to cut that program in 2024-25. People currently working as guest teachers could apply for jobs as teachers or assistants, depending on whether they’re certified.
The federal money has also paid for $2,500 signing bonuses for teachers in hard-to-fill fields, such as teaching students with disabilities, students who don’t speak English and secondary math and science.
It remains unclear how Hill plans to deal with the loss of federal pandemic aid, which is running out next year. She’s scheduled to present a 2024-25 budget April 9, and her staff is also working on a five-year financial plan to support long-range goals.
