Macon County Schools depended heavily on the determination and adaptability of teachers this year. Teachers ran split classrooms, learned new technologies and stepped up in a big way to help staff summer classes. In the next school year, however, administrators will be tasked with a new challenge beyond recovering from COVID-19 – replacing a huge number of those teachers.
When the Macon County Board of Education met at the end of June, superintendent Chris Baldwin recognized 41 teachers whose 2020-21 school year was their last before retirement. That’s a dramatic leap from the 10 who retired after the 2019-20 school year, which was more in line with the annual average. Baldwin says that every teacher who’s retiring this year has worked hard and earned a respite, but not only will filling all of those positions be an ambitious process, it’ll be even harder to replace all that those teachers have learned on the job.
“These folks understand that education is an art and a science,” Baldwin said. “It’s about building relationships with people, with students, with families… that’s something that you only learn through practice and we’re losing a lot of that expertise. Forty-one is a huge impact.”
Macon County Schools isn’t alone in this conundrum. Teaching became a much more chaotic job during the pandemic and many experts believe that it’s driving down the number of available teachers all over the country. In North Carolina, the issue is prevalent enough that the General Assembly unanimously agreed on a bill that will allow college graduates who take a semester of teacher preparation courses to serve as part-time adjunct high school instructors to offset the deficit of full-time staff. District 50 state senator and sponsor of the bill Kevin Corbin thinks that Macon County in particular will benefit from the law and the community members who can help fill in for the abundance of retirees.
“It will help Macon County by allowing professionals educated in a certain area to be able to teach,” Corbin said. “Superintendents and principals are excited to know they can fill in those gaps with local folks who want to help.”
Macon County Schools Personnel Director Todd Gibbs is not particularly worried about the retirements. Having four times as many as last year is an imposing obstacle, of course, but he says that the likeliest reason for it is an unfortunate alignment of employee timelines. Looking at the school system’s most recent monthly personnel report, one can see that there were only seven certified staff members who resigned but didn’t retire, compared to 16 new certified staff members who were hired. People may be retiring in greater numbers this year, but Gibbs says it’s not a problem with the system – it’s just how things shook out this time around.
“A lot of the people who are retiring right now, they’ve been here for decades. Some of them have taught for 30 or 40 years,” Gibbs said. “Things like this come in cycles and waves. COVID may have worn a few people down this year, but it’s not just because of that.”
As far as finding the next wave of Macon County teachers goes, the administration has a little less than two months to figure things out. They’ll likely benefit from a crop of concerned citizens who make the most out of adjunct opportunities and Gibbs is confident that there will also be enough full-time applicants to meet the county’s needs.
“Right now, we’re focusing on hiring competent, qualified, credentialed employees,” Gibbs said. “I think we’re going to be just fine.”