Rural schools face unique challenges filling positions
[March 11, 2025]
By Jessie Nguyen and Medill Illinois News Bureau
SPRINGFIELD – When Gretchen Weiss applied for a teaching position at
Macomb Middle School in west-central Illinois more than 20 years ago,
the school’s policy was to keep applications on file for only a year due
to the large volume of applicants.
That is no longer the case. Now, applications are kept on file
indefinitely, Weiss said.
Macomb and other smaller schools in rural Illinois are seeing firsthand
the effects of a persistent statewide educator shortage. Though school
districts are coping with the crisis through creative alternative
measures, teachers and education leaders said they might only work in
the short term.
A recent survey of the state’s educators by the Illinois Association of
Regional Superintendents of Schools, or IARSS, looks at the impact of
the ongoing teacher shortage where 87% of education leaders in the state
indicated a “minor, serious or very serious (shortage) problem” for the
2024-25 school year. That includes 83% of districts in west-central
Illinois.
“Schools and districts that serve more students from low-income
households, more bilingual students and more students of color are more
likely to be dealing with more significant vacancies. And I think this
report is a reminder of that,” said Robin Steans, president of Advance
Illinois, an advocacy organization working to promote the Illinois
public education system.
At Carbondale High School where roughly half of the student population
are minorities, finding teachers who look like the students is part of
the challenge.
“Some folks in our building — who work as paraprofessionals and support
staff, who want to become teachers, who are more representative of our
community and as far as their demographics — are having trouble finding
those opportunities, those pipelines into teaching,” said assistant
principal Tyler Chance. “Right now, we’re looking at hiring a Spanish
teacher, which is hard to find in a rural area.”
Ninety percent of school leaders in rural Illinois reported none or very
few applicants for open positions, according to the study, released
Monday. Bilingual teachers, English as a Second Language instructors and
special education teachers are among the state’s top unfilled positions
this year.
Short-term solutions
Roughly 3,864 positions across Illinois are unfilled this school year,
while 6,117 positions were filled through alternative solutions. From
hiring retirees to shortening the teacher pathway, Illinois schools are
easing the effects of the crisis in their own ways.
A special education reading, language arts and theatre teacher in the
Macomb school district, Weiss said she’s thankful to have veteran
teachers return to Macomb from retirement to help guide newer teachers.
“Those teachers know the ins and outs of the district and are really
good in their field,” Weiss said. “We’re lucky that those retired
teachers act in that capacity… because it’s a tough job and if you don’t
have the support, it would be easy to see why someone would be like, ‘I
think I’m going to do something else.’”
Speeding up the licensing process is another way Illinois schools are
tackling the shortage. Short-term credentials have allowed teachers to
teach new subjects and grade levels without having to complete the
traditional coursework or earn the Professional Educator License (PEL),
a requirement for Illinois teachers, according to the 2023 Teacher
Pipeline report by Advance Illinois.
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Though most short-term approvals allow licensed educators to teach in
grade levels and subject areas in which they are not yet endorsed, the
Content Knowledge Pathway, a new type of short-term approval, allows
non-PEL holders to teach for up to three years, the report said.
For the 2021-22 school year, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, 1.5
percent of all Illinois teachers held short-term approvals, which might
require educators to have a PEL. That’s up from just 0.1 percent in the
2017-18 school year.
But Chance said these alternatives seem like “band aids” when the
prolonged teacher shortage needs to be addressed with “longer term
care.”
“I think policy-wise, the big rush is to open doors for folks to get
into teaching quickly, and that’s one of the doors I stepped through —
Teach for America,” Chance said. “But some of it needs to be the long
game. We need to make sure that teaching is a valued profession, that it
has the community respect it used to have.”
He added, “We need to make sure that we have a diverse teacher workforce
… that teachers are paid well and that’s the long game and harder
solutions, rather than online programs that people can complete
quickly.”
Teaching as “a calling”
Seventeen years ago, in his first year of teaching, Joe Brewer was
“coaching every sport full time” on top of making overhead projectors at
night due to the lack of technological advancement at his old school in
Fulton County. Brewer said it was how teachers like him could make ends
meet.
Currently a dean at Beardstown Community Unit School District, Brewer
still works additional hours after school, teaching GED courses two
nights a week.
To Brewer, teaching isn’t just about the pay.
“That’s just the water we swim,” he said. “I view (teaching) as a
calling, but that’s problematic, because we have to live our life.”
Due to the long hours at work, Brewer jokingly said he raised his two
sons through the “Ring camera.”
“Maybe it’s helping me fill a financial gap to make some ends meet, but
it does come at a cost of spending that quality time,” he said.
For veteran educators like Brewer, having space to grow professionally
is one of the ways school districts can retain educators amidst the
shortage. He believes rural areas can offer a sense of community that
supports teachers in their profession.
“This is where rural schools can lead the way because our best asset is
our social capital — we know everybody,” Brewer said. “We can be really
easily connected in our community in a way that we don’t have to
hustle.”
Weiss echoed Brewer’s sentiments.
When she first earned her teaching certificate from Western Illinois
University, Weiss had plans to teach in a big city, but now she’s glad
she was “willing to give a rural area a shot.”
“Here I am 30 years later,” Weiss said. “This is a place that very
quickly feels like home.”
Jessie Nguyen is a graduate student in journalism
with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media,
Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill
Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News
Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is
funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
McCormick Foundation. |
