Legislators discuss staffing issues at Illinois schools
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[July 21, 2023]
By Andrew Hensel | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Illinois lawmakers are working on addressing
school staffing issues.
Officials representing speech pathologists, nurses and special education
teachers met with the Illinois House Elementary & Secondary Education
Committee Thursday to discuss the need for more workers.
Illinois State Board of Education numbers show 7,188 unfilled teaching
positions across the state, resulting in a 3.47% vacancy rate.
State Rep. Janet Yang Rohr, D-Naperville, was asked if the issue is at
all exaggerated.
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"I was in the K-12 appropriations committee, so we are looking at money
that is going to schools, and one of the reports we looked at, all it
did was looked at open positions and unfilled positions," Yang Rohr told
The Center Square. "So based on that, clearly, there are a lot of
unfilled positions."
Committee chair state Rep. Michelle Mussman, D-Schaumburg, said the
staffing issue is a real problem beyond just classroom teachers.
"It's the social workers. It is the counselors. It is the reading
specialist. It is everything in the background. It is the entire school
community," Mussman said. "The lunchroom workers, the bus drivers,
everybody who is interacting with the education space right now. We just
need more of them, really to be able to wrap around and support our
youth."
Those representing the Illinois Education Association said workers are
scarce because many in the general population have begun to look at the
teaching profession in a negative light. Yang Rohr told The Center
Square that is a difficult problem to address.
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"We have given them more resources to try and address these [staffing
issues], but if you listen to the things that they were saying, like a
lack of respect and a more combative environment, and I don't know how
to legislate being nice or being civil," Yang Rohr said.
Along with the "negative" views on the profession, ISBE stated some of
the factors contributing to staffing issues are the taxes on education,
pension problems, problems with state funding and the impact of Senate
Bill 100, which uses state funding for "at risk students" and prohibits
early childhood programs that receive state funds from expelling any
students.
Republicans have been critical of the state's education policies like
curriculum being top down instead of allowing more local control. State
Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City, said throwing more taxpayer money
at education does nothing to fix that problem.
"I think that we should do a lot more focusing on getting our
proficiency levels up through the K-8 programs before we pile a bunch
more on to the State Board of Education, that really over the past three
years has done a really dismal job," Wilhour said earlier this year.
Illinois spends more than $16,000 per student, far more than neighboring
states, he said.
“We’re spending record money, we’re just not seeing the results,” said
Wilhour. “We’ve got too much bureaucracy for one, just sucking away
dollars from the classrooms.”
Illinois currently has around 3,600 open teaching positions open and
another 2,700 openings for school paraprofessionals.
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