Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
The school board’s recent decision to curb admissions for out-of-district students for some grade levels this year comes from a deeper issue: a lack of teaching staff, according to Superintendent Mark Sale.
By email, Sale said they had been unfortunately anticipating the issue.
“We have heard that a teacher shortage has been coming for several years. It is here. While we would love to have additional staff in the classroom, we struggle to find more than a few teacher applicants for each vacant position. If a specialty area is included as a requirement such as Math, Science, English, and Exceptional Children the effect is a further reduction in the applicant pool,” he said.
A CBS-17 report from July this year says the problem is statewide – the state of North Carolina had over 5,000 vacant teacher jobs as of May this year. Governor Roy Cooper has reportedly set up $3 million in funding to help pay for reimbursing teacher license exam fees.
There are plans for raises for teacher jobs being pursued by both the state Senate and House, with drastically differing benefits. The House plan is the more generous one, with an average raise of 10% for teachers over two years. The Senate plan would only provide 4.5% over two years, with more going to those early in their careers.
According to Rep. Mike Clampitt, the issue might be brought up again at the next session beginning Sept. 11. Clampitt said to his knowledge, the plan in the works is “a combination of both plans.” As of press time, the calendar has not been finalized. Clampitt said he hopes the budget will be a priority.
At a school board meeting over the summer, the board members voted to send a resolution urging lawmakers to pass the House plan.
Sale added one of the disadvantages Swain County faces is related to its lack of wealth and resources, which could put off prospective teachers from considering it highly.
“More affluent and larger systems have the drawing power of location that is attractive to young, single teachers because of population, housing variability and retail opportunity,” he said.
He thought the extra money from the rural school supplement funding, put in place in 2021, has helped them somewhat, though.
The cutoff point
At the most recent Swain County school board meeting, the board members heard from Sale that there were several classes that were close to full – at both elementary schools, kindergarten and first grade were essentially at or over capacity.
Some high school freshman classes were also seeing levels close to the maximum allowed by the rules of the state.
Sale said the priority had to be Swain County children first, so they had to cap out-of-district admissions for the year, for those classes.
The state says schools in Swain County can have one teacher for every 18 kindergarteners and one for every 16 first graders. For ninth graders, there can be one teacher for every 26.5 students.
For the other high school grades, there can be one teacher for every 29 students.
After that, in all cases, the school district must fund extra teachers and rooms themselves.
“At that point the class size is limited by the state, and we have to either add a teacher and classroom or move to split classes with two grade levels in the room as a possible solution,” Sale wrote.
High school principal Sonya Blankenship said it would be better if the state allowed for more funding for teachers.
Blankenship said the class sizes fluctuate all the time and some classes, primarily those every student has to take, are commonly tight on space anyway. “This year we have large underclassmen numbers and a small senior class (101). We have 159 freshmen, 163 sophomores, and 146 Juniors. Because students are required to take 4 years of English, Math, and Social Studies and 3 years of science- these sections will always have higher numbers,” she said by email.
Blankenship said the class sizes this year are “larger than we have experienced since Covid.” Sale concurred, saying they were “some of the largest class sizes we have experienced in several years at the high school.”
Last year’s graduating class was also among the largest ever to graduate from the school, Blankenship added.
East Elementary Principal Amanda Sutton said the school had made use of assistants for teachers, so the classrooms were manageable even with the numbers of students they sometimes have.
She said overcrowding was “not a concern at our school due to these measures. However, it's important to note that the challenge lies in the availability of qualified teaching applicants.”
Luring in more teachers
Looking to the future, Sale said it might be worthwhile to consider broader community solutions to try and retain younger professional teachers in Swain County.
“Another area of support is providing the opportunity for a like-minded age group to develop their own community,” he said.
One way to do that could be more apartments. All roads lead back to housing, which has been a persistent problem for Swain County due to rising costs of living and limited space with the mountainous terrain.
Sale said he thought there were options that could happen in the future, such as converting the current middle school to apartments, if the county ends up able to build a new one on land traded from Mark Fortner earlier this year. That will come down to grant funding availability.
“If we are able to build a new middle school, could the current middle school location be renovated into apartments for professionals that are serving the community through safety, health, and educational services?” he wondered. “I believe we must provide an attractive incentive for young, single professionals to move to Swain County. Doing so is going to require multiple resources that will require economic support.”