By CRAIG FREILICH

Despite a steep drop in applications for teaching positions, St. Lawrence County school officials have not had much difficulty in filling most positions for the current school year.

But finding candidates for highly specialized jobs such as speech therapists, special education teachers and school psychologists has become increasingly difficult.

“Previously, we might get 100 applications for an elementary teacher position, and now it’s 20, 30, 40,” said Canton Central School Superintendent Bill Gregory.

“The pools are smaller than they have been, but the quality of candidates is very strong,” said Massena Central School Superintendent Pat Brady, who formerly served as head of Potsdam schools.

He said the district had more close to 40 positions to fill, more than usual, “with retirements, people who left for other positions closer to home,” but candidates had been chosen for almost all of them before school doors opened.

“There are still a few holes left to fill, but we got ahead on it, so I think we’re in good shape,” he said.

Brady said applicants are still of good quality because state and local colleges have “raised the bar for teachers. Those committed to teaching tend to stay longer (in training), and those not as strong tend to drop out. There are fewer, but it’s a good pool, good candidates.”

Canton’s Gregory said that at a superintendents’ conference at the beginning of August, “there were no stark reports” about recruiting and hiring problems, but he and others are saying that if the drop in applications continues its downward trend, they could have a harder time of it next year.

“In certain areas, such as science and math, we’ve seen a precipitous drop in applications” for those teaching positions, and also for other positions where they might not have expected to see a drop-off, Gregory said.

Brady said the staff and the board at Massena Central saw that the teacher supply seemed to be tightening up.

“We were aware the pool was shallower than in the past. That’s why we made a concerted effort as early as possible” to plan for hiring. “We know we’re competing with other North Country schools for candidates.”

For instance, he said, “we asked those teachers who wanted to retire to let us know,” so they could start planning, Brady said.

There are last-minute complications that can arise when a teacher from one local district takes an offer from a nearby district, especially this late in the hiring season.

“It’s a difficult call to make” when a district will take a teacher under those circumstances, leaving the other district with an opening that has to be filled quickly, Canton’s Gregory said.

“That happens, but we don’t recruit against other districts. It’s up to the teacher to apply,” he said.

Of the 11 teachers and two other professional staff appointments they have had to fill before the doors open in Canton next week, only the reading specialist position remained open last week. He said they might have to ask a retiree to come back until they can find someone to fill that one spot permanently.

In the Heuvelton Central School District, the challenge has been finding a full-time vocal music teacher. Superintendent Susan Todd they are asking the music teacher who retired three years ago, Lisa Gardner, to return for the time being.

What Caused The Smaller Applicant Pool

Administrators point to a few things that might have combined to result in fewer new teachers being available.

A documented decline in the number of young people joining teacher-training programs “doesn’t really surprise me, when you consider some of the discussions and rhetoric of recent years,” said St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES District Superintendent and Executive Officer Thomas R. Burns.

The cuts in state aid at the start of the recession – about eight years ago – occurred at the same time that the Common Core standards were being implemented, with new course material, new tests at higher standards, and teacher evaluations that were to be tied more closely to their students’ performance on the new tests.

Burns said he believes the people enmeshed in the controversy over the implementation of Common Core and related issues underestimated the consequences in the discussions of teacher performance assessments, state budgets, “just a lot of negativity.”

The new teacher evaluations based on their students’ performance and results from new Common Core tests that came in lower than what had been called for. They were interpreted by some as a failure of teachers and administrators, and were widely reported.

Young people searching out a college and a career “are very perceptive. They hear that. High school and college students heard the rhetoric and made their decisions based on the negativity” coming through in the discussions of schools and teaching, Burns said.

At the same time huge cuts in state funding for schools resulted in teacher layoffs, lowering the demand for new teachers.

All of that combined to discourage young people who might have been thinking about becoming teachers from actually pursuing it, Burns said.

The decline comes just as many districts are getting back on a good enough financial footing to fill positions they had been forced to drop in the last eight years, and just as more baby boomers in education are retiring. So demand for teachers is up while the supply could be lagging.

“Unless we start seeing those numbers going up at teacher prep colleges, we’ll see a lag for some time,” Burns said.

Specialized Positions A Concern

Burns’ particular concern is the number of highly specialized positions that BOCES, as a cooperative organization, takes responsibility for in many districts.

It is becoming harder to find fully qualified people for speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, school psychology and counseling positions. They can be so hard to find – and so expensive – that many schools rely on BOCES to hire and share them among districts.

“There are just not enough in the North Country,” said Burns.

“They do specialized work, requiring specialized certifications and undergraduate and graduate degrees,” Burns said.

He said there are not many training opportunities in New York.

“There are not many schools around the state that offer these programs. We recruit and try to fill the gaps,” he said.

BOCES hires a great many in those fields for local school districts to use or share. He said that 300 people on the SLLBOCES payroll work in special education alone.

He is not shy about putting out a message to the public:

“People might consider being a teacher or a speech therapist. It’s never too late for a career change,” he said.

“Most educators do enjoy the job. It can be challenging, but there are lots of rewards working with students, for sure.”