Multiple education professionals discussed the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic during a virtual panel Thursday, urging the need to find systemic solutions to Nebraska's teacher shortages.
The conversation was included in a two-part virtual hearing from the Nebraska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to hear testimony around the implications of the pandemic on education.
The committee is a 13-person group of volunteers that help the commission investigate state issues. They will provide their findings and recommendations from public testimony to the commission to help address education problems made worse by COVID-19.
"The best thing we can do about the teacher shortage is to keep the teachers we have," said Guy Trainin, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's department of teaching, learning and teacher education. "And we do that by not adding to the work — by making sure we don't add to their workload and helping them out and then bring more people in the profession."
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Nebraska's educator shortage was severely impacted by the pandemic and has only worsened over the past few years. In a survey published earlier this year, the Nebraska Department of Education found that the number of reported unfilled teaching jobs across the state was up nearly 60%.
Trainin said the districts that are being hit the hardest from the shortages are in high-need, urban areas or in rural communities. In the metro area, the Omaha Public Schools has been losing the most staff over the past two years.
One of the top issues is lack of substitute teachers and paraprofessionals, Trainin said.
"These are the people who make sure that services to students are continuous," Trainin said. "Most schools and systems are now operating with a fraction of substitute teachers and paraeducators that they need to move forward."
Trainin said the state needs to be more innovative in creating solutions to bump the number of substitute teachers and paraprofessionals, in turn relieving the workload of teachers to prevent them from leaving their roles.
Dawn Lindsley, a Nebraska 4-H extension educator, pointed out that state officials have made some strides in addressing the shortage. The State Board of Education has been working on improving teacher certification and lawmakers have passed education legislation such LB762, which would devote $1 million to tuition assistance for paraprofessionals looking to become teachers.
Ted Hamann, a Nebraska Advisory Committee member, asked how the teacher shortages have been affecting different groups of Nebraska students.
"(We) are paying attention to the civil rights concerns by race, ethnicity, gender, religion...are there any particular ways to circle back to this broader issue of teacher shortages that the pandemic exacerbated?" Hamann said. "Has that exacerbation visited certain districts or certain kinds of student populations in a way that a body worried about civil rights should be paying particularly careful attention to?"
Trainin said the state has seen less school participation in career and technical education, including fewer females in computer science.
"The number of boys that took computer science courses stayed the same before and after the pandemic. But the number of girls diminished by about 40%," Trainin said. "That's a really significant impact. I'm not 100% sure why it's happening. But we know that in some districts, there was no possibility because they did not have the teacher workforce to provide those (courses)."
Trainin and Lindsley were also joined by Adriana Villavicencio, an assistant professor from the University of California, Irvine, who talked about how the pandemic negatively affected students' academic, physiological and psychological needs.
Villavicencio said the pandemic worsened issues for immigrant and English Learner (EL) students.
"I think we've seen, even in states with a healthy and long history of serving immigrant families, a real shortage of teachers who are equipped to serve ELs and to serve them in a way that's more integrated into the community and integrated into the school community," Villavicencio said.
Trainin also pointed to students in special education, who suddenly lost most or all of their services when learning shifted online. Teacher shortages, which are also more extreme in the special education field, have contributed to special education students not receiving the services they deserve in Nebraska schools.
"(Teachers) were really making progress with students and suddenly everything stopped. Kids regressed," Trainin said. "This is the first group we (need to) think about as we come back to provide services. We need to make sure we serve them because (they are) probably one of the most disrupted groups."
The Nebraska Advisory Committee encourages community members to attend its next public forum to gather more testimony about how COVID-19 has affected K-12 education, especially when it comes to civil rights.
The in-person event is still in the planning phase, but will take place the afternoon of Aug. 9 in Lincoln. People can check the Federal Register website for details once they are finalized.