Another small bulletin from the Department of Effects of the Teacher Exodus.
Osceola County is in central Florida, home to roughly 389,000 people, over half of whom are Hispanic. It's the twelfth most Hispanic-majority county in the country, one of three such counties in the state. Their school system has faced the usual issues in recent years, from battles over masking to school board members in prolonged political clashes to hiring an ex-legislator to lobby for the district after that representative resigned his seat over a prostitution scandal. Okay, maybe that last one is a little unusual.
But they have one other usual problem--teaching positions they have trouble filling.
School board Vice Chair Julius Melendez has some theories about the problem: confusion caused by the pandemic, disappointment over low salaries and fear of mass shootings, he suggested, "has made it hard to retain veteran teachers and recruit new ones." I suspect having state leaders who are openly hostile to public education doesn't help, either.
It's not a brand new idea. In 2019, CNN did a whole feature story about districts looking to hire from overseas. Arizona was bringing folks in from the Philippines to fill spots back in 2014, and they must have been happy with the results because it was still a thing in 2019. Osceola calls this a short term fix, but they might want to talk to Arizona about that.
It's an educational rock and a staffing hard place. We know there is not really a teaching shortage, but more of a decent pay, working conditions, and treatment of the job respect shortage, but at this point, we're so far down this hole that if all of those conditions were solved tomorrow (spoiler alert: they won't be, and they especially won't be in Ron DeSantis's Florida) it would still take a couple of years to fill the pipeline again.
"Any warm body" rules changes and "outsourcing to countries where people will put up with our crap" initiatives are not a solution to the actual problem. All these fans of the free market ought to understand, as I've said before, when I can't buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn't mean there's a car shortage. If you can't buy what you want (in this case, the labor of teachers) for what you're offering, you have to make a better offer.
In the meantime, we'll get more creative solutions of the "anything but improve our offer" variety. Good luck, Florida.
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