Over the last six months, a record number of Texas teachers have been reported to the state for leaving in the middle of the school year. Doing so means a district can have a teacher’s license revoked — amid a shortage of teachers. | via TexasTribune
Staci Crosswell, a second grade teacher at Lakeshore Elementary School, has been teaching online from her Houston home for two years. She recently submitted her resignation to Humble ISD and will be pursuing a master’s degree and publishing a children’s book.
At least 471 contract abandonment reports have been sent to the state, according to recent data. That’s a 60% increase from the 2021 fiscal year.Teachers who opt to leave in the middle of a school year can be reported to the state, and the State Board for Educator Certification can either suspend or revoke a teacher’s certification. In most cases, teachers receive a one-year suspension of their certification.
“On top of having such a difficult job, being kicked around in the public discourse has just gotten to be too much for a lot of teachers,” Tapp said, referring to the push to ban anti-racism instruction, labeled by some state lawmakers as critical race theory, and the move by some districts to restrict acknowledgement of LGBTQ identities in the classroom.
Exter said he has a hard time believing that districts want to punish these teachers. Instead, he thinks they want to create an atmosphere that stops other teachers from trying to quit as well. But that isn’t an effective strategy because most teachers who leave mid-year are leaving the profession and are not coming back.
“Every single one of those individuals have made a conscious decision to say they no longer give a damn about their teacher certification because conditions have gotten that bad,” Capo said. The vast majority of teacher contracts are single-year contracts, Tapp said. And although districts like Pflugerville ISD have decided to more aggressively report teachers to the state in the midst of a teacher shortage, some have taken the opposite approach — like giving thousands of dollars in bonuses to teachers who decide to stay.
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