Even if Governor Kristi Noem and Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn do cook up a plan to open private schools to properly indoctrinate a generation of Trumpist youth in South Dakota, where will they find the teachers? According to Morgan Matzen, with less than a month until school starts, South Dakota is still short 298 teachers:
Almost 300 teacher positions have yet to be filled across South Dakota, weeks before school will start back up in many of the state’s 149 districts.
That’s according to Wade Pogany, executive director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, which maintains a Teacher Placement Center database where educators can look online to find job opportunities.
The center’s data and openings can’t be viewed by the public, but Pogany told the Argus Leader on Friday that the website has 309 openings at this time, with 11 of them being for administrators and 298 of them for teaching positions.
Most* of the open positions – 65 of them – are in special education, while another 64 open positions are in elementary school, Pogany said.
“It’s out of the norm,” Pogany said, when comparing the current shortage to job openings seen in recent years. “Generally, at the end of July, we see around 200 openings. This is almost 100 positions higher than normal” [Morgan Matzen, “Nearly 300 South Dakota Teacher Jobs Are Still Open—With Weeks Left Before School Starts,” Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 2022.07.29].
298 teachers—that averages out to two teachers short in each of South Dakota’s 149 public school districts. Which two teaching positions could your school district do without? And which 15 or 20 teachers could your public school give up to staff a competing Hillsdale indoctrination center?
*Plurality Pickiness: “Most” of the open positions are no in special education. The 65 special ed positions are the largest single category of openings, but 22% is not “most”. The special ed and elementary ed openings together make up 43% of openings. “Most” of the openings, the majority of the openings, are outside of those two fields.
High School teaching is a tough job, requiring complete attention to detail, and a high dose of adrenalin. One on One personal interaction is constant. Composure is required. Plus, you have to know what you’re talking about. It’s a 12 hour day. Commitment, dedication and patience are required.
Many private schools are not accredited so they have their own hiring standards and do not adhere to State regulations
This is a serious problem
Given we burned so much political capital in 2016 to enact a meager teacher pay program that has failed to fulfill its promises, what can the Legislature do now to recruit and retain teachers?
Just to let you know, it’s a serious problem in most states, and it’s been that way for decades. It’s gone from serious to critical.