Amid scrambles for teachers, some fear worse shortages ahead

HARRISBURG, Pa. — As schools scramble to find enough substitute teachers to keep classrooms running through the latest surge of the coronavirus, some experts warn there are longer-term problems with the teacher pipeline that cannot be solved with emergency substitutes, bonuses and loosened qualifications. “I see a very large concern, it’s like impending doom almost, when you look out a few years at what this may turn into,” said Randal Lutz, superintendent of the Baldwin-Whitehall School District near Pittsburgh, where German classes had to go fully online last year when none of the handful of applicants was qualified for a vacancy. Florida’s American Rescue Plan application said projected “day 1” teacher vacancies for the coming year dipped between 2019 and 2020. Concerns about teacher shortages that have arisen in the past, sometimes during wartime, have prompted stopgap measures similar to what are currently being developed, said Diana D’Amico Pawlewicz, a University of North Dakota education professor. “This is the tragic consequence of decades spent chronically underfunding education and shortchanging students.” Kerry Mulvihill, a science teacher at Gerald Huesken Middle School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said only five people applied for an 8th-grade science position this fall and none of them made it to the interview stage.