Kentucky teacher shortage: Are 'thousands' of jobs actually vacant?
Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis has in recent weeks drawn attention to a statewide teacher shortage, warning that thousands of instructional vacancies could be putting student learning at risk.
But reports of an immediate crisis are overblown, a Courier Journal review has found.
That's because figures being used to describe the shortage — for example, that school districts have posted more than 2,000 teaching vacancies since April — fail to acknowledge that hundreds of those vacancies have, in fact, been filled.
Jefferson County Public Schools, for example, had as of Friday morning 595 teaching vacancies posted on the state's educator employment website. By its own account, though, JCPS said it had just 129 instructional vacancies.
State employment data for Fayette County Public Schools, Kentucky's second largest district, also failed to match up with district records. Though FCPS on Friday had 367 teaching jobs posted on the state website, a district spokeswoman said the school system considered just 28 certified jobs vacant.
"And we are making more offers as we speak," Lisa Deffendall said.
Smaller districts shared similar discrepancies with the Courier Journal.
State data showed Anderson County Schools and Johnson County Schools each have 26 vacancies. Asked for updated data, both districts said they had just two job openings.
Jessica Fletcher, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education, said the state was aware of the issue. But she maintained the department had been clear in its messaging.
"We’ve been intentionally saying that that is not the current number of vacancies, but the number of positions posted," Fletcher said. "I have seen some misreporting by a few news agencies where they mistakenly refer to the number of vacancies, not postings that may have previously been filled."
As of early Monday morning, the state had not asked any news outlets to correct or clarify their stories. By noon, Fletcher said she had contacted two news organizations and would be sending out a news advisory about the differences between postings and vacancies. CONTINUE READING: Kentucky teacher shortage: Are 'thousands' of jobs actually vacant?
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