‘It’s not easy’: Channel 9 sits down with local teachers to discuss shortages, solutions

Teachers -- some of our most valuable resources -- are facing a shortage of employees.

Educators are leaving the profession in record numbers.

There are various reasons people leave, but Channel 9′s Elsa Gillis sat down with three teachers about what they’re seeing in schools and the effects it’s having on children.

One of the teachers was Kimberly Biondi, who recently retired from Cabarrus County Schools after 21 years. Biondi said she hopes positions get filled soon.

“You know, I want to see our schools succeed,” she said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools says it has had 875 teacher separations since August 2021, and there are currently 116 teacher vacancies.

“We were facing a crisis in North Carolina before COVID,” said Steve Oreskovic, a 27-year veteran teacher of CMS. “This is the perfect storm.”

Union County Public Schools has had 260 teacher resignations and retirements since August and there are 124 vacancies.

“So, it feels from the outside that there are droves of educators are leaving, struggling. And feels like it’s unprecedented. Is that accurate?” Gillis asked the educators.

The three teachers tell Gillis it is accurate.

Channel 9 sits down with local teachers to discuss shortage of educators

(WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Channel 9 sits down with local teachers to discuss shortage of educators)

“It feels that way to me,” Biondi said. “After I left and the teacher who replaced me also left, my sophomore classes got absorbed into other teachers’ classes, because they couldn’t find a warm body to stand in my class. Not a long-term sub. Not anyone. My AP class sits there and takes the class online because there is nobody qualified. You have to do special training to qualify for AP. You know, there’s nobody. And so it breaks my heart.”

There are bigger class sizes, which are altogether being cut because so many teachers are leaving.

That is making one-on-one teaching more of a challenge, Biondi said.

“We’ve got people leaving schools, getting out of education entirely,” Oreskovic said. “There is a massive amount of people trying to transfer schools, looking for better school leadership, looking for a better opportunity. There’s always some kind of change and ebb and flow. But this is unreal. It really is everything coming to a head and some people leaving in the middle of the year even.”

“A lot of people are just tired, and a lot of people are ready to quit,” said Pamela Carlton, a teacher with Union County Public Schools for 22 years. “A lot of people just don’t feel valued anymore.”

“I think that we’re in for a reckoning,” Biondi said. “I don’t want to think about what the fall is going to look like. I hope we can get positions filled.”

Facing the pandemic and getting fatigued: ‘Teaching is not easy’

The turmoil in the education system during the pandemic has been a driving factor for teachers’ mass exodus.

“I couldn’t help but see that the teachers who had been lauded as heroes, you know, in the in the spring, were being vilified because many of us were afraid to go back and catch COVID,” Biondi said.

Biondi retired in Sept. 2021 because of that. She said the questioning of approved literary material and accusations about what’s being taught in the classroom also added to the decision.

“I said, ‘I’m not fighting this uphill battle anymore,’” Biondi said.

“If you want to know, come talk to me,” Oreskovic said. “I’ll talk to anybody. I don’t care. It’s really simple, right? Like I said, these books are approved. The stuff that we do. We’re not indoctrinating.”

There has not been a loss in learning due to COVID-19, he said. It is a learning delay.

“And the systems and the state have not made that switch to how do we fix the delay,” Oreskovic said. “It’s, ‘Let’s just plow ahead.’”

The teachers also said they way in which education has been handled on the state level over the years is one reason some are choosing a different direction. For example, teachers are facing changes in their pay for those who have a master’s degree and retirement health benefits.

“Teaching is not easy,” Carlton said. “It’s not easy. We are doctors. We are nurses. We are counselors. We’re therapists. We all get rolled into one. We do it because that’s what we love to do. And so, but you’re taking, you know, good people and good people are walking away.”

Channel 9 sits down with local teachers to discuss shortages, solutions

(WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Channel 9 sits down with local teachers to discuss shortages, solutions)

Retention and hiring: ‘New teachers need good mentorship’

The three teachers told Gillis that hiring and retention are areas school districts should focus on.

“It’s going to take a lot of creativity to get new teachers in and try to retain the teachers that we have,” Carlton said.

“New teachers need good mentorship,” Biondi said. “They need somebody to guide them.”

“You need qualified people in the classroom, who have the experience,” Oreskovic said.

Where do we go from here? ‘Talk to teachers’

They said they will take their concerns to the ballot box to keep an open dialogue between teachers, administrators and school boards.

“You really need to talk to the teachers,” Oreskovic said. “That’s another thing we’ve been trying to push; to get a teacher onto our school board in an advisory role.”

“I love what I do,” Carlton said. “And, you know, I work with children with autism, and that is my passion always has been for 20-plus years. I’m not going anywhere. But things have got to get better. They have to get better.”

Data from a recent survey shows 55% of educators are thinking about leaving the profession earlier than they had planned, according to the National Education Association.

Serious problems include pandemic-related stress and burning out, according to 90% of the educators who were surveyed.

Higher salaries, additional mental support for students, hiring more teachers and support staff and less paperwork could help address the issues, the survey showed.

(WATCH BELOW: Districts forced to lean on substitutes as teacher shortage gets worse)

Districts forced to lean on substitutes as teacher shortage gets worse

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