SOUTHERN TIER — The teacher shortage has been ongoing for years and has impacted rural school districts the most, so 7 News went to the Southern Tier to hear from Superintendents, teachers, educators, and professionals about when it will end.
Salamanca Superintendent Mark Beehler says he has had openings for occupational therapists, and special education teachers for years, partly due to the distance from the city of Buffalo.
Leaving openings for young teachers to be in charge of their first stop as an educator.
"The new teachers or any teacher is in an advantageous position because they can shop around"
Like 4th grade teacher at Salamanca, Emma Telesco who drives an hour and a half everyday from Amherst to the school district.
I had a choice of a school that was five minutes away or a school that is an hour and twenty minutes away, I wanted to choose the school that felt right to me
Nationwide 60-percent of teachers leaving rural districts say they were not satisfied in their position due to low wages and and 41% percent say they were leaving for a better job.
According to Buffalo Business Firsts' latest analysis of teacher pay in Western New York, the top highest paying districts in are in urban or suburban areas—with Williamsville at the top of the list, paying teachers on average just over $100,000 a year. The lowest paying districts are all rural areas, including Randolph, Elba, Whitesville, Letchworth, and Perry Central—-where teachers earn on average less than 46-thousand a year.
Statewide the Board of Education estimates in the next ten years there will be 180,000 job openings for teachers.
Some other school districts are feeling the pressure of not being able to pay high salaries.
Last year we were looking for an earth science teacher, and it took it us months to find a candidate we ended up with a great teacher but we had to recruit across New York State to have them move to Ellicottville.
The sad reality is if school districts do not fill empty spots, they may have to send their students to other districts -- just like Whitesville School District near the PA border.
It makes me sad, it makes me sad because we do great things in Whitesville, we care about our kids, we know our kids and we are a family. So I feel like we are sending our kids outside of Whitesville and they losing the specialness of Whitesville.
The Western New York Education Council hopes to give school districts tools to make their job openings more appealing for the younger teachers.
I hope they hear one idea, that they can take back and try and make a difference in their ability to create a great program for kids
The next generation of teachers are getting prepared to work in rural areas, Wendy Paterson Dean of the School of Education at Buffalo State University says the teacher shortage happens almost every 10 years due to retiring teachers and teachers leaving for better-paying jobs.
So she is preparing students for teaching opportunities is more rural communities.
We serve the suburbs very well but we need to rethink how we are staffing and providing for our rural partners and i think that needs to happen with our residency programs
