“Districts have been scrambling more this summer than ever before to secure staff, and they are increasingly hiring staff from other districts, which has a domino effect in terms of turnover,” said Michael LaSusa, president of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators and superintendent of the School District of the Chathams. He said he heard similar frustrations on a recent
Robert Goodman, head of the nonprofit New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning, a licensed graduate school that helps train teachers in physics, chemistry, math, and computer science, said he knows of some hard-to-staff classes that were canceled due to a lack of teachers. Others are using an online instructor from the Center while a substitute manages the classroom in person.
In the Morris School District, Superintendent Anne Mucci said that because of the teacher shortage, most districts are holding employees to the requirement that they give 60 days’ notice before leaving. Some classes won’t be offered or will be limited to upperclassmen. If class sizes cannot be increased because of safety issues in science labs, equipment shortages in art, or the physical size of the classrooms, then access to courses may be restricted to seniors who need a course for graduation, followed by juniors, and so on.