Recently there have been news reports of a labor shortage in Mitchell. I’ll address that general shortage later in this piece. However, I want to start with something I’m very familiar with and that is the shortage of teachers in general and in Mitchell specifically.

I get a kick every year out of Dr. Graves’ statement, “We have a full staff in Mitchell to start the school year.” That statement is truthful without being accurate. While I was the Chair of the Social Studies department, we had an opening for a teaching position for which very few people applied. Ultimately, three candidates were interviewed but none of them were hired, for various reasons. When my wife left Mitchell High School for Southeast Technical College, only one person applied for her position, and no one was hired at that time to take her place. When this happens, kids are routinely rescheduled into different sections to make them bigger (at the end of my career my class sizes were regularly 32 and higher for my required classes) or dropped from courses and shuffled into something entirely different. This is why kids are scheduled in the spring but mum’s the word until the fall, so this sleight of hand and subterfuge can take place. The result is the remaining teachers take on an overloaded teaching assignment with enormous class sizes or the alternative is students simply lose out on opportunities and choices.

In Florida there are approximately 8,000 openings for teachers, and 450,000 kids began the school year without a permanent teacher at the head of the class. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced a $5,000 bonus for retired fire fighters, police officers and paramedics if they would come out of retirement and teach. This is crazy on a number of fronts. The idea that anyone can teach is ridiculous. We’ve all had teachers who were well educated in the subject matter but who couldn’t communicate that knowledge or perhaps couldn’t maintain classroom order. On the other hand, we’ve all had that teacher who perhaps was likeable and maintained discipline but who couldn’t find their butt with both hands when it came to the actual subject matter. DeSantis has also suggested allowing those without a four-year degree to teach in the classroom under the mentorship of a veteran teacher, who would still have their full schedule and teaching responsibilities in addition to mentoring, for two years. A sort of two-year long paid student teaching gig. Florida is 16th in the nation for starting salaries for teachers and ranks 48th for overall teaching salaries. In addition to Florida, the crisis is particularly acute in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and in major metropolitan areas like Chicago. A nationwide survey found that 72% of school districts across the country didn’t have enough applications for open teaching positions and if truth be told, that’s been the situation in Mitchell for years now.

So why is there a teacher shortage here, there and everywhere? There are several reasons. First, it takes time – loads and loads of time – to be a good teacher and not everyone wants to put in the time and money that it takes first to actually become a teacher let alone the time it takes to be a good teacher after being certified. Forty-four percent of teachers quit the profession in the first five years because of the time commitment required, the stress of being a teacher and their ability to make more money doing almost anything else (Seth Goshorn, a teacher in Ohio, quit teaching and went to work at Walmart and made $10,00 more a year there than he did as a teacher all while working less hours overall). The general public views teaching as an eight am to three pm on the golf course by four kind of thing. That’s not true. Teachers are there before school and after school, sometimes a long time after school especially if they coach/direct extracurricular activities. Then there is the preparation for the next day’s lessons across multiple subjects/courses and correcting papers at night. Add in the time to do the “administrivia” of lesson plans, entering grades, changing bulletin boards, answering emails etc. and you have what I experienced in all thirty-six years of my teaching career – 12-to-14-hour days during the week with additional time on the weekends for almost 10 months of the year. Next there is the time and expense of maintaining one’s teaching certificate (that’s what most teachers do with their “summers off”), parent-teacher conferences and the aggravation of endless and mostly useless in-service “trainings”. As the late-night infomercials would say, but wait, there’s more…

In a 2020-2021 American Psychological Association Survey 14% of teachers reported being physically attacked by students and a third reported being threatened or harassed. School shootings are a real and growing phenomenon which further reduces the desirability of teaching as a career. Madison County, North Carolina schools are putting AR-15s in strategic locations around their buildings as an additional hedge against a possible school shooter. South Dakota has the “Sentinel Program” which allows for the training and arming of teachers in order to respond immediately to a school shooter. Most teachers don’t want to be in a position of being armed and charged with the responsibility of killing a child, even in an extreme situation.

Then there are the parents. Everyone has been to school so everyone feels they know how and what should be done in the classroom. Every infraction, act of classroom discipline or violation of training rules is now contested and litigated by parents. Education, especially the social studies, has become politicized with teachers under a microscope from zealots on both sides of the political spectrum. Teachers are not supported and the realities of teaching, for example having more than thirty 14-year-olds in a classroom being taught a subject they have zero interest in, is not appreciated. The Houghton-Mifflin Educator Confidence Report of 2022 found that 76% of K-12 educators feel negatively about the teaching profession. So did I at the end of my career, I still loved the kids but hated the system. Former aerospace engineer Ryan Fuller has a great essay entitled, “Teaching Isn’t Rocket Science, It’s Harder” that delves into the challenges of teaching and why half of the current teachers in the nation are considering quitting the profession this year.

Pay is part of the answer but so are benefits. My wife left her job at Mitchell High School after thirty years to teach essentially the same thing at Southeast Technical College for $5000 less in salary than what she was getting paid in Mitchell. However, while the benefits at Southeast are provided by the same company that provides them to the Mitchell School District, they are cheaper at Southeast to the employees. Consequently, because of the difference in the benefit expense at Southeast even with the reduced salary, Julie is earning thousands more by making the move. There are also professional advantages that the move brought, along with the extra money.

I would tell the kids when I was teaching, “I hope you never have a job. I hope you have a career.” That’s because, to me, a “job” is something you drag your sorry ass out of bed to do just to put food on the table. Confucius said, and it’s true, “Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Perhaps the “labor shortage” in Mitchell is due to the lack of careers and the plethora of “jobs”. I have the Indeed app on my phone. I love my current occupation but as a typical American, I’m always looking for greener pastures. There just aren’t that many openings in Mitchell. Where is the “labor shortage”?

When I was on the City Council, Roger Musick – one of the founders of the Martin and Associates and the current CEO of Innovative Systems – would badger me to support DWU and MTI in any way that I and the City could. Roger did that because he is a great employer. He knows in order for the City of Mitchell to be vibrant we need a mix of population, young to old and he needs a deep pool of educated talent to draw workers from. He wants energetic, committed employees and he does what he can – pay, benefits, perks etc. – to lure those employees to his company. If there is a labor shortage in Mitchell, why aren’t those firms that are experiencing workforce issues partnering with programs at DWU and MTI to groom and recruit future employees? Why aren’t those companies in front of the Mitchell School Board to suggest courses that would help better prepare high school kids for jobs and careers here in Mitchell?

If there is a labor shortage then perhaps working conditions, pay and benefits are the issue rather than the available supply of potential personnel. People want to work for decent wages with reasonable shifts that allow them to see and raise their children, attend their kids’ school events and allow them be part of their church and community. Obviously, the employer has needs and expectations but that doesn’t mean that employees have none of their own or shouldn’t have any.

My people are immigrants. My father was a first generation American. English was his second language, his first was Norwegian (he passed away in 2006). On my father’s side, some relatives came during the great immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century; for instance, my paternal grandmother emigrated from Norway to the United States in 1914. On my mother’s side, we have ancestors that escaped Ireland during the infamous potato famine. As a country, we need immigrants. They enrich and revitalize our nation. However, this current push to bring immigrants to town smells to me of folks wanting cheap labor, grateful for any opportunity who can be exploited to the very limits of the written law. Let’s look for local solutions – pay and benefits by the employer and coordination with local education entities – before we go importing people of any kind from elsewhere.