Thirty-four teaching positions sit unfilled across Bellwater's public schools this fall, and the district's superintendent says the same budget shortfall that sank her school-closure plan is limiting how much it can do about it.
Bellwater Public Schools is entering the new school year with 34 unfilled teaching positions, concentrated in math, science and special education, according to figures Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Carrick presented to the school board this week, a shortage officials say has worsened over each of the past three years.
The vacancies come as the district is still searching for ways to close a $6.8 million budget shortfall after the school board voted down Carrick’s proposal to close two under-enrolled schools earlier this year, a rejection that left staffing and program cuts as two of the district’s remaining options.
A shortage with a familiar shape
Melinda Osei, president of the Bellwater Federation of Teachers, said the vacancies were most severe in the district’s Lowertown and Cedar Hollow schools, where she said high turnover has compounded the hiring difficulty. “We’re not just failing to hire new teachers in these subjects,” Osei said. “We’re losing the ones we already have to districts that can pay more or to burnout, and then trying to fill both gaps with substitutes.”
Renata Cho, a special education teacher at a Cedar Hollow elementary school, said her caseload has grown from twelve students three years ago to nineteen this year as the district has struggled to fill open special education positions. “I love this work, but nineteen students with individualized plans is not a caseload, it’s a triage list,” Cho said. “Something in every one of those plans is not getting the attention it’s supposed to get, and I know exactly which parts, because I’m the one deciding what falls through.”
Budget tension complicates the fix
Carrick told the board the district has raised starting teacher pay twice in the past three years but remains below the regional average, particularly compared to suburban districts outside the city that have benefited from the tax base created by new tech-sector development. She said the district’s ability to raise pay further is constrained by the same budget shortfall that prompted her rejected school-closure proposal.
“I understand why the board voted the way it did on the closures,” Carrick told the board. “But I want to be direct that the money we didn’t save through that plan is money we don’t have available to raise pay in the subjects where we’re bleeding staff the fastest.”
School Board Chair Melissa Overby, who led the opposition to Carrick’s closure plan, acknowledged the tension but said she did not believe the two issues should be treated as a simple trade-off. “I don’t accept the premise that the only way to pay teachers more is to close two schools in neighborhoods that have already lost so much,” Overby said. “We need to find that money somewhere else, and I think that’s on all of us, not just the superintendent.”
Every year we don’t fix this, the gap gets a little wider and a little harder to close, because the teachers who leave take experience with them that we can’t replace with a new hire straight out of a certification program.
Dr. Yvonne Carrick, Superintendent, Bellwater Public Schools
The district has leaned on a mix of long-term substitutes, video-conferenced instruction for some upper-level math courses, and expanded class sizes to cover the vacancies, according to district data presented at the meeting. Carrick said the district was also exploring a loan-forgiveness partnership with Bellwater State University’s education program, aimed at encouraging recent graduates to commit to teaching in the district’s highest-need schools.
Osei said the union supported the loan-forgiveness idea but warned it would take years to meaningfully affect the current vacancy numbers. “We need something that helps this September, not just five Septembers from now,” she said. “Right now the plan for this September is substitutes and bigger class sizes, and that’s not really a plan at all.”
Carrick said the district would present the board with a formal proposal addressing both the teacher shortage and the broader budget shortfall within the next several weeks, as the board continues to search for a path forward after rejecting the school-closure plan.
District data showed the shortage was least severe in Foundry Row and Riverside Heights schools, where Carrick said higher property values and newer facilities have made positions easier to fill, a disparity that has drawn criticism from parents in harder-hit neighborhoods. Fitzgerald, the Cedar Hollow parent who led opposition to the earlier closure proposal, said the vacancy numbers reinforced her view that the district’s resources were unevenly distributed even without the closures going forward. “We kept our school open, and I’m glad we did,” she said. “But an open building with no math teacher in it isn’t really a win either.”
Cho, the special education teacher, said she had considered leaving the district for a suburban position with a lower caseload and higher pay but ultimately decided to stay, citing her relationships with students and families. “I know exactly what I’d be giving up if I left, both for me and for the kids I’d be leaving behind,” she said. “That doesn’t mean the district gets to count on that loyalty forever without doing something about the pay gap.”
Carrick said the district’s proposed loan-forgiveness partnership with Bellwater State would target math, science and special education certifications specifically, offering graduates a portion of their student debt forgiven in exchange for a multi-year teaching commitment in the district’s highest-vacancy schools. She said the proposal would require board approval and additional funding the district has not yet identified.