For years, state lawmakers have publicly grappled with how best to reverse, or at least stem, the growing tide of educator shortages, but simple fixes have proved elusive.
Despite the increased attention paid to the issue during recent legislative sessions, teacher advocates say there’s been scant progress made to address the root causes of teacher turnover.
“The things that we’re telling people are wrong have not been fixed,” South Carolina Education Association President Sherry East said in November following the release of another tranche of discouraging teacher vacancy data.
Recent state budgets have included increases in minimum salaries — teachers currently start at $40,000 — but the pay hikes alone don’t provide enough of a financial incentive, especially with rising inflation, to attract or retain teachers, advocates say.
“It’s not so much the money,” East said. “It’s what you’re asking them to do for that amount of money.”
More impactful, advocates say, would be to address the taxing work environment and lack of support that drives so many educators from the classroom.
Last year’s passage of a bill that guaranteed 30 minutes of break time to elementary and special education teachers was a good first step, they say, but more needs to be done to ease the growing burdens teachers face.
Lawmakers recently launched a teacher recruitment and retention task force, which met for the second time earlier this week, and numerous bills intended to support teachers and address the growing educator shortage have been filed ahead of the upcoming legislative session, starting Jan. 10.
The bills deal with a range of pressing issues such as teacher pay, contracts, certification and loan forgiveness, among others.
While additional teacher-related bills will surely be filed throughout the legislative session, below is a rundown of what lawmakers have proposed to date:
COMPENSATION
Pay often dominates legislative discussions about teacher recruitment and retention, so it’s no surprise lawmakers have filed seven separate bills that would impact teacher compensation.
Three of the bills, all filed by Democrats, are straightforward salary increases.
Two propose adjusting the state’s minimum teacher salary schedule so it tracks with the national average of teacher salaries, which, according to a recent National Education Association report, was about $65,000 in 2020. The third would give a 5% raise to all teachers next school year and another 5% the following school year. That bill also would allow teachers whose districts don’t reimburse them for purchasing classroom supplies to claim up to $500 in refundable tax credits, an increase from the current $300 maximum refund.
Other proposals would affect teacher compensation in different ways.
A bill filed by Sen. Gerald Malloy, D- Darlington, would allow districts to use state or federal dollars to give bonuses to outstanding teachers as a retention incentive. Bonuses could not exceed 20% of a teacher’s salary and would be conditioned on the teacher renewing their employment contract.
Another bill, filed by Sen. Mike Fanning, D- Fairfield, would extend the teacher minimum salary schedule to 28 years, meaning teachers would be guaranteed an additional five years of pay increases later in their careers.
Many teachers currently max out their salaries after their 23rd year, although some individual districts go beyond that, said Patrick Kelly, director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association.
Kelly said it was sensible to extend the salary schedule to 28 years because it’s the point at which teachers can retire with full benefits.
“If you’re going to set up a salary schedule that is awarding pay raises based on years of experience, it should at least extend until the eligible age of retirement,” he said.
Two other compensation-related bills Kelly said his organization strongly supports were filed by Republican Sen. Tom Young, R- Aiken, and Rep. Neal Collins, R- Pickens.
Young wants teachers who previously worked at least five years in another field to be paid based on their total years of related experience. Collins wants to spare teachers from being required to do non-instructional work — such as bus duty, lunch duty, coaching and student club moderation — without compensation.
Young said his bill was inspired by potential career changers who decline to pursue teaching because it would mean a sizable pay cut.
“When (career changers) come into the profession they start at Step Zero on the salary schedule, and that’s a huge disincentive,” said Kelly, who called Young’s bill a “fantastic” idea.
While Young’s bill wouldn’t provide back pay for current teachers with prior occupational experience, it would allow existing educators with non-teaching experience to request a pay bump commensurate with their total years of related work experience.
“It’s a retention tool, but it’s also a recruitment tool,” Kelly said.
Collins’ bill, if approved, would raise teacher pay for those interested in taking on extracurricular duties while improving working conditions for those who are not.
Too often, he said, districts saddle teachers with non-instructional responsibilities without additional compensation.
“A teacher is a professional who needs to be treated as a professional,” said Collins, whose bill would require that teachers are paid only for “instruction, planning and attending faculty meetings and professional development.”
Any other duties a teacher agrees to perform must be negotiated separately and cannot be required as an “express or implied condition of employment,” according to the bill.
“Your contract is for you to be in that classroom teaching and everything outside of that classroom is not involved in the contract,” Collins said. “The teacher can do it if they want to, but it’s not a requirement as it’s being used now.”
Teacher expectations vary widely between districts, Kelly said, but many do ask educators to perform non-instructional tasks for no additional pay.
“That’s an issue that contributes heavily to teacher burnout,” he said.
CONTRACTS
Collins’ bill isn’t the only one that attempts to reform the teacher contract process.
Rep. Raye Felder, R- York, has filed legislation that gives teachers more flexibility to break contracts and reduces penalties for educators who do.
As the system currently works, teachers must sign a contract each year before knowing what they’ll be paid. If they subsequently break their contract, for whatever reason, teachers are deemed guilty of unprofessional conduct and subject to license suspension for up to a year.
The state suspends the licenses of dozens of teachers each year for breach of contract violations. Cases typically involve teachers who stopped coming to work or moved out of state, but also have affected teachers who quit their jobs due to COVID-related health and safety concerns or interpersonal reasons.
Felder’s bill would permit teachers to rescind their contract within 10 days of when their district releases its salary schedule for the coming school year, which typically occurs in late June, after passage of the state budget.
The legislation also would reduce the length of time teachers who breach their contracts can have their licenses suspended, starts the clock on that suspension immediately rather than dragging it out and gives the State Board of Education more leeway in deciding whether disciplinary action is necessary in such cases.
“(Teachers) are the one segment that we ask to sign a contract before we show them what the salary schedule is,” Felder said. “I don’t know in any other profession that that’s the way it’s done.”
She said she understood why districts sometimes pursue disciplinary action against teachers who break their contracts, but doesn’t think teachers who leave mid-contract for legitimate personal or professional reasons should face repercussions.
“I think we all owe it to the profession to make teachers feel as welcomed and rewarded as possible,” Felder said.
Sen. Mia McLeod, D- Richland, has also filed legislation that would safeguard teachers who terminate their contracts.
McLeod’s bill, which would apply specifically to teachers who break their contract to accept a position in another district, would prohibit districts from retaliating against teachers who terminate their contracts and prevent districts from releasing information about teacher contract terminations.
CERTIFICATION
Another frequently-cited headache for teachers is the recertification process.
Teachers currently must renew their professional license every five years by completing 120 credits of renewal coursework within a set timeframe.
Several Republican lawmakers have filed legislation that would limit or eliminate recertification requirements, and one would eliminate teacher certification altogether.
Rep. Doug Gilliam, R- Union, has filed a bill that would waive certificate renewal requirements for teachers with 20 or more years of experience in the state, as long as they participate in professional development required by their district.
Collins takes that proposal a step further in legislation he’s filed that makes professional certificates permanent. Under Collins’ plan, teachers, who typically advance to professional certification after three years with an initial certificate, would never need to renew their license, but could still have it suspended or revoked.
“The recertification process, from what I receive in feedback from teachers, hasn’t been the greatest,” Collins said. “I know they certainly would feel more empowered as professionals if they didn’t have to recertify.”
Rep. Jordan Pace, R- Berkeley, has proposed doing away with teacher certification entirely.
The 33-year-old freshman lawmaker, who previously taught at a Christian school in Goose Creek, filed a bill that would repeal licensure requirements for 11 professions, including therapists, social workers, speech pathologists and teachers.
FINANCIAL INCENTIVES
The state has for years offered various forms of financial assistance, including scholarships and loan forgiveness, to incentivize residents to embark on teaching careers.
Sen. John Scott, D- Richland, has filed legislation aimed at encouraging educators to teach in impoverished areas with high levels of unemployment by offering them stipends, loan forgiveness and housing payments.
Under Scott’s proposal, teachers who work in low-income areas would receive a $500 monthly stipend for up to five years. After three years working in a high-needs area, teachers would become eligible for $7,500 in annual loan forgiveness and a one-time $3,500 down payment on a home.
“If you provide a package that offers forgiveness of the debt, as well as providing some assistance for housing and utility allowances, I think you’ll find teachers will go in those areas,” Scott said.
Reps. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D- Orangeburg, and Kambrell Garvin, D- Richland, also have filed bills that would expand teacher loan forgiveness.
Currently, South Carolina teachers are eligible for loan forgiveness of 20%, or $3,000, whichever is greater, for each full year they work in a high-needs geographical area or teach a subject defined as “critical need,” due to the shortage of teachers in that subject.
Educators who work in high-needs areas and also teach critical need subjects are eligible to have 33.3%, or $5,000, of their loans forgiven annually.
Cobb-Hunter’s bill would provide all public school teachers loan and interest forgiveness at an annual rate of 33.3%, or $5,000, whichever is greater, while Garvin’s proposal calls for forgiving teachers’ loans after they’ve taught in the state for five consecutive years.
Another bill, introduced by Collins, would forestall the loan forgiveness discussion altogether if it passed.
Collins’ proposal calls for using education lottery money to fully fund undergraduate and master’s degrees for all teachers. Scholarship recipients would be required to teach for as many years as they were awarded state money, and any who failed to complete their degrees would be required to repay the money.
The bill also would offer current teachers up to $30,000 in loan forgiveness. Teachers who accepted loan assistance from the state would be required to teach one year for every $10,000 awarded, and pay back the grant if they didn’t end up teaching.
Collins has a separate bill that would require all teachers to have master’s degrees, which he said was inspired by a trip to Finland several years ago where he learned what that country had done to become a leader in teacher retention and student achievement.
Collins’ bill also mandates that the state superintendent have a master’s degree prior to announcing their candidacy, which, had it been in place this year, would have disqualified Superintendent-elect Ellen Weaver from running.
Collins declined comment on Weaver’s situation, calling it “water under the bridge,” and said he simply sought to “clean up” the requirements for state superintendent to comport with what legislators had intended.
MORE BENEFITS, IMPROVING WORKING CONDITIONS
Other notable bills filed ahead of the legislative session include proposals to grant teachers up to six weeks of paid parental leave, establish smaller class size limits and make it more attractive for retired teachers to return to the classroom.
Fanning, the Fairfield County senator, also has introduced a Teacher Bill of Rights and a Teachers’ Freedom of Speech Act, which would protect teachers from discipline, transfer or termination over their public or private support of a public policy decision.
Kelly said the parental leave bill, which would grant teachers entrée to the same benefits approved for state employees last year, could be a “dynamite” recruitment and retention tool.
Educators, roughly 80% of whom are women, have indicated in surveys that parental leave policies would be among the most effective ways of keeping them in the classroom, he said.
“This is the profession that we’re asking to care for the children of our state,” Kelly said. “We should provide those individuals with the capacity to spend time with their newborn, adopted or fostered child.”
If South Carolina were to enact paid parental leave for all public school teachers, it would become the first southern state to do so, and one of just three states in the nation with paid parental leave for educators.
“That would be powerful for South Carolina school districts that are attending career expos in other states to say, ‘Hey, come to South Carolina, and when you start your family we’re going to guarantee you’ll have paid parental leave,’” Kelly said.
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