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The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn] –
With school starting in less than two weeks for some Middle Tennessee students, some school districts still have hundreds of teaching positions left unfilled.
Wilson County schools has 75 certified teacher positions open currently while Sumner County has 80 and Rutherford County has 88.
During a hiring fair last weekend, Metro Nashville was seeking to fill roughly 230 teaching positions while Williamson County is looking to find teachers and staff for its openings during a job fair on Thursday, July 21st from 9 to 11 a.m. Central Time.
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Recently, Governor Lee recently held a ceremonial signing of new legislation that is intended to help with current school staffing shortages.
The new law will permit retired educators to be rehired as teachers or bus drivers without losing their retirement benefits. Previously, members of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System were allowed to work but only for a maximum of 120 days. The new legislation will remove that limit and allow them to work for an entire year. That one year contract can be renewed annually if they are still lacking other qualified applicants.
This does not mean retired teachers can work full-time and still receive their entire retirement benefit. Instead, those benefits will be reduced to 70% of the entitled retirement compensation, instead of being suspended completely.
Many have wondered what has brought about so many teachers leaving the profession and the lack of new teachers coming into the profession.
In an interview with The Tennessee Conservative, Kathleen O’Toole, Hillsdale’s Assistant Provost for K-12 Education, offered the following:
“As a former school principal, I know what the education bureaucracy does to teachers. It makes teaching a frustrating profession because in it, there’s an increasing push for standardization and taking the responsibility for the student’s success away from the teachers… taking authority of the teachers out of the classroom. Also, things are getting increasingly politicized in K-12 education. The teachers I know didn’t sign on to be social engineers. They signed on for teaching because they learned some important and beautiful things in their own education and they want to spend their lives showing those things to others.”
“Teachers are the heart of education and for our education system to go well, that depends on us as a country, training our teachers well and treating our teachers well,” O’Toole said.
About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career. Most recently, he served as Deputy Director for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History. Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com
