Kentucky has a shortage of teachers. The state's Department of Education says 13% of vacant staff positions went unfilled last school year. This fall, Kentucky schools reported 1,766 vacant positions, with many of those openings being licensed educator roles, special education, and early childhood teachers.
The state has been ramping up its effort to expand teacher recruitment by targeting current high school students.
Educators Rising Kentucky is a program aimed at attracting more young people to the profession. It hosts recruiting events all over the state and connects high school students with opportunities to shadow educators in the classroom. Students say this helps develop their skills, turning them into more effective educators in the future.
Jackson Herald, a senior at Connor High School in Hebron who attended an Educators Rising conference at Northern Kentucky University, says he wants to be part of the solution to address the shortage. He wants to teach high school-level math, but his goals in the classroom go beyond the numbers.
"My main goal with pursuing education is not teaching kids how to do math," Herald said. "It's more being able to be a trusted adult for a kid that needs it. If one student out of my entire career walks out and remembers I was there when they needed me, my life has been worth it. I've done what I wanted to do."
Veda Stewart, director of educator recruitment and development at the Kentucky Department of Education, says identifying passionate students like Herald earlier in their school careers is critical to developing the next generation of educators. Still, efforts to recruit more teachers can be full of challenges, the biggest being wages.
According to the National Education Association, Kentucky ranks among the lowest in the country for teacher pay, and the average teacher salary falls short of the standard for a minimum living wage. Stewart says this is a deterrent for many young people.
"That's not the end-all-be-all, but that does matter," she said. "They want to make a decent wage, they want to be able to afford a home and all of those kinds of things."
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Stewart says teachers dealing with low pay is nothing new, but public school educators now face additional challenges like increased scrutiny over what they're teaching in the classroom.
While those hurdles drive some people away, others like SeAnna Spriggs, a junior at Ignite Institute in Hebron, say that's exactly what's motivating them to enter the world of education.
Spriggs is passionate about education policy, and while she wants to be a teacher one day, she's diving into the Educators Rising program to make an even bigger difference.
"I would like to see myself in a high school history classroom at the beginning of my career, but then, I would also like to move up to a principal position, superintendent, and my dream ending point is to be the commissioner of the Department of Education for Kentucky," she said.
One of Sprigg's biggest career goals is to help change the perception of public education in her state. She says efforts to divert funding and students away from public schools have been gaining ground in Kentucky, like the recent Amendment 2, which failed to pass this November. She says she wants to see public schools get stronger so people from all walks of life can learn together.
"A lot of people look down on it, but there are so many beautiful things that happen in public education that doesn't get shared out in the world the way that it should be," Spriggs said.
Both Herald and Spriggs say they plan to continue their education close to home and return to their communities in Northern Kentucky to teach. The challenge now, is getting more of their peers to do the same.
