by Steven Berbeco, 802 Newsletter
Teachers have an outsized role in education and for good reason: they deliver the lessons, keep the classrooms orderly, and a few dozen other duties as assigned. It would stand to reason, then, that teachers would be top of the charts when it comes to recruiting for school staff positions. After all, how many of us naturally think about teachers when the topic of staff shortages comes up?
The reality, though, or at least the reality in our post-pandemic world of new normals, is that teachers are among the fewest open positions in Vermont today. There are about 200 open positions for teachers, fewer than food services (about 280) and afterschool program staff (about 400). Maybe not the catastrophic numbers that one would expect.
Classroom aides, however, are another story. This job category includes paraeducators, bus assistants, instructional assistants, reading assistants, technical education specialists, and many other similar roles. There are currently more than a thousand open positions for classroom aides across the state, representing more than a third of all open positions in education. To put this into context, the number of open positions is greater than the population of North Hero, Canaan, Ripton, or 85 other towns in Vermont. (Link .xls)
The chart below tracks the number of openings for classroom aides over the total number of education openings in the 90 days prior to publication, presented as data points. Data from AOE’s Aithent Licensing System. (Link .htm)
Republished from 802 Newsletter