(bright music) (children chatting) - Education is like every other industry in the country right now.

And so education isn't immune to that same workforce shortage.

And we continue to see that in South Dakota.

- Boosting teacher numbers means boosting teacher pay.

- I think pay can be a factor, but I think even more so is the, I'll say political climate.

- They were like, "You are such a good teacher, Miss C." And I'm like, that is the most wonderful thing in the world and I want to hear that every single day.

- Teachers start the foundation for all other careers.

And if we don't have high quality teachers and we don't invest in teachers, I'm scared to see what the future looks like.

- [Narrator] Policymakers and educators are working to solve South Dakota's teacher shortage.

That's tonight's "South Dakota Focus."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] Conversations around South Dakota's workforce shortage often center on trades, like welding or electrical work.

One solution is giving students an early taste of the skills they might need while they're still in school.

But that takes teachers, that's another profession facing a shortage.

The Northwest Area Schools Educational Co-Op serves eight school districts across six counties.

Its mobile classroom program brings a variety of career and technical education or CTE classes to students who might not otherwise have the opportunity.

Quinn Lenk is the program director.

- Our mobile classrooms are basically a 14 by 60 trailer that has been converted to a mobile classroom complete with industry standard equipment.

And we provide the instructor to the school.

- [Narrator] The program has been serving the area for 50 years, but that could change.

- I will have at the end of this current school term three CTE positions open, and then I have or will have two special ed positions open, be looking for a speech language pathologist and an early childhood SPED instructor.

- [Narrator] Lenk acknowledges the remote area and travel required for a traveling classroom can make it harder to recruit talent, but it doesn't help that the teaching profession is considered a low earning career compared to the trades.

- I was in a conversation the other day with a representative from the career and technical ed.

We talked about bringing people out of industry to teach.

We talked about that.

The state allows that, but in my mind, when teacher salaries are not competitive with what that person can do in industry, why would you take, and I don't know these numbers to be solid, why would you take a teaching job for way less than what you could take the welding position doing offshore welding or working in manufacturing someplace.

They can get way more money doing that than they can coming and being an educator.

- [Narrator] It's an issue that goes beyond the state's rural communities and beyond CTE courses.

Doug Wermedal is Executive Director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, which represents the state's 148 school districts.

- I think you do see some classic types of positions, elementary special education positions are typically leaders in our vacancies, but in terms of urban versus rural, it's just hard to hire all over, yeah.

- [Narrator] The Associated School Boards of South Dakota maintains a database of open teaching positions, including the CTE positions with Northwest Area Schools.

Wermedal says the shortage isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's still a significant issue.

- We're seeing about 300 and change in terms of openings, but if you go back a few years, you can see those numbers in the fours and fives.

- [Narrator] But that number is based on positions school districts are placing ads to fill.

- That may not reflect positions that they've closed and decided that they won't hire.

It doesn't reflect positions that they've consolidated.

So it's kind of the South Dakota way to wear a couple hats and make do with the staff that you've got.

So real vacancies are actually probably a little higher than what we have advertisements for.

- [Narrator] A teaching shortage can mean a difference in quality for students.

Sandra Waltman is the Government Relations and Communication Director for the South Dakota Education Association, which advocates for public school employees.

- Sometimes a district may have enough students for two or three sections of a first grade or second grade class, but because they can only find two teachers, instead of having three sections, they have two.

And that impacts the students because they get less one-on-one time with a teacher.

And you also at the high school level, you have schools that are no longer offering some courses.

So students are losing the opportunity to take foreign language courses or perhaps advanced math or a full array of science courses because the districts can't get the teachers they need.

So when those positions go unfilled, those are really opportunities the students don't have to take a class.

- [Narrator] This isn't a new problem either.

Low teacher salaries have been blamed for South Dakota's lack of teachers for decades.

Nearly 30 years ago, Governor Bill Janklow spurred lawmakers to cap school district reserves to encourage more money for teacher salaries.

During the next administration, Governor Mike Rounds removed the cab.

I asked South Dakota Secretary of Education Joe Graves to reflect on his time as a superintendent during a recent episode of "In The Moment Statehouse."

He says some positions like high level math have always been more difficult to fill, - But what we started to notice was in about the last five, six, seven, eight years, right in there, we started having problems with hiring positions that we had never had issues with before.

So things like middle school English or even an elementary classroom teacher job because those had traditionally been very common, very easy to fulfill.

We would talk about that when I began in my superintendency over 30 years ago, we would have file cabinets full of elementary applicants and so it became when we knew five, six, seven, eight years ago when those began to be shortages, we knew we were in a real definite teacher shortage.

- [Narrator] That's around the same time then-Governor Dennis Daugaard proposed the Blue Ribbon Task Force, at the time, South Dakota ranked last in the nation for teacher pay.

In 2016, lawmakers approved a half cent sales tax increase to bump teacher salaries.

Governor Daugaard highlighted the positive impact in his 2017 State of the State Address.

- I've already heard from many superintendents that these changes are having an impact.

Fewer teachers are departing, fewer vacancies are left unfilled, positions are getting more applications, and more teachers are staying in South Dakota rather than leaving the state.

- [Narrator] The initial bump lifted South Dakota from 51st in the nation for teacher pay to 47th.

Since then, inflation and other factors have put South Dakota's teacher pay ranking back towards the bottom at 49th.

That's even with budgetary increases towards education in recent years.

Dennis Daugaard's then Chief of Staff Tony Venhuizen was one of the members of the Blue Ribbon Force.

Now he's a state representative for District 13.

He says the policies set in place by the task force did what they were supposed to do.

- The problem we have now is that was eight years ago, and the schools are all well beyond that level of spending on salaries.

And so it's an accountability metric that doesn't really continue to force increases.

- [Narrator] That's why Governor Kristi Noem and other lawmakers are targeting teacher salary again this year.

- Studies show that just one year with a great teacher can raise a student's earning potential by thousands of dollars a year.

It can even increase a student's self-esteem.

Great teachers help make that happen, and we can retain great teachers by paying them what they deserve.

- [Narrator] Thanks to an influx of federal pandemic relief funds, the Noem administration has approved six and 7% funding increases to education in recent years.

But she says that hasn't been reflected in teachers' pay.

- So I would ask why would we continue to send money to school administrators and school boards when they don't pass it on to teachers?

I'm working with my Secretary of Education, Dr. Graves, to bring some ideas to all of you, to the legislature about how to bridge this gap.

- [Narrator] But pay is just one piece of the puzzle.

Travis Lape is Director of Innovative Programs for the Harrisburg School District.

He remembers watching the initial impact of the Blue Ribbon Task Force.

- So we get this bump in pay, everybody's heading in the right direction, but we weren't seeing an increase in kids choosing education as a career path.

So a group of local superintendents really started talking and really wanted to figure out how do we do this?

Like how do we inspire our kids to be teachers?

Because teachers are always very good at telling kids other opportunities besides their own career.

- [Narrator] Lape wanted to leverage Harrisburg's existing CTE classes on teaching.

He thought back to his own experience as a high schooler with Future Farmers of America.

- I didn't have cows and pigs and didn't grow up like that, but I had the leadership side.

And so parliamentary procedure, public speaking, job interview, those were the events that I thrived in in FFA.

And so I thought back, I was like, gosh, little town, didn't get out a lot, but I got to see the world through the organization.

And I said, we don't have that for for education.

- [Narrator] But he found it through a national organization called Educators Rising.

It offers high schoolers firsthand experience leading a classroom.

State and national conferences include competitions related to public speaking, children's literature, and lesson plans.

Lape is now the State Director of the program.

He says Educators Rising South Dakota has grown to 50 chapters around the state.

- Just last year we were really just hovering right at about 150, 175 five members, and now this year we're over 350 members.

- [Narrator] One of those members is Katelyn Christopherson.

She's a junior at Harrisburg High School and a state officer for Educators Rising.

She competes in the lesson plan competition.

Judges review footage of her presenting a lesson plan she created in front of a real classroom.

Christopherson won third place at the national conference last year for her middle school social studies lesson plan.

Today she's teaching second graders at Harrisburg's Explorer Elementary.

- First off, I want you to talk with your neighbor about what your favorite flavor of ice cream is.

- Chip.

- Mint chip?

That's my favorite flavor too.

What about you?

- Cookie dough.

- Ooh, that's a good flavor too.

So today I want you to be able by the end to tell the difference between a solid, a liquid, and a gas.

And if you don't know what those are yet, that's okay.

We're gonna learn about them, and you're gonna be able to see them in the steps of ice cream and then be able to make a beautiful picture, okay?

- [Narrator] She keeps the class's attention with an example they can all appreciate.

- Do you remember how I asked you about your favorite ice cream flavor?

- [Students] Yeah.

- Well what if I told you we actually get to make ice cream today?

(students cheering) For this to happen, I'm gonna need a couple of volunteers.

The thing I pride myself on when I do these lesson plans is making sure I have multiple different ways to learn it.

Because everybody is so different.

Some are auditory learners.

Some are visual learners.

By having all those different ways of learning, I know I got to most of the kids in that class, like I got to them in some way that they could understand it and then they can have an example in the back of their mind.

Like the ice cream, when they think of the states of matter, they're gonna think ice cream now.

- [Narrator] What started as a class Christopherson tried with a friend has become a passion for a future career.

Clearly you wanna be a teacher.

Yeah, you're very passionate about this, but you wanna be a teacher in South Dakota.

- Yeah.

- Tell me more about why.

- I think there's just something about where I grew up.

There's that like we're in like rural South Dakota, rural Midwest.

There's just something about that connection that we can create with students that there's obvious, I obviously go to a very large school at Harrisburg, but being able to make those connections in those smaller schools and meeting all these people and making, I keep saying making connections, but they're so important in getting to those learners.

So like during the lesson today, you saw me getting on their level trying to understand how their brains worked and how they understood the content to make sure that I was being the best teacher I could.

And I feel like I can do that in the best way possible in South Dakota.

- [Narrator] Notice she didn't say anything about the pay.

- For students, it's not really, especially high school kids, they're living with mom and dad, food's on the table, gas is in the car, I can do things.

So to them, pay isn't number one, it's not on the forefront.

Now if we dig in and we start asking and probing questions, it could come up, but it's not what they're thinking about.

What they're thinking about is the perception.

What they're thinking about is do I wanna go into a profession that every time I turn on the local news or I read the paper, I'm reading something about somewhere we're bashing teachers, teachers are bad, teachers are indoctrinating, those are the things that are real for our kids.

- [Narrator] Lape says there are layers to the teacher shortage problem.

While policymakers work on salary, programs like Educators Rising ensure students know teaching is a viable and meaningful career option.

- We just want to grow the base and we want to grow teachers right here in South Dakota because there's a national statistic out there that says almost 60% of teachers live and work within 20 miles of where they grew up.

Our future teachers are in our schools.

We've gotta bring them to events, get them connected with a bigger audience to go, "Wow, this is where I wanna be.

Education is where I wanna see myself in the next three years" because I've come to these events, I've seen a hundred other kids all excited about the career in education.

Now this is solidifying what I want to do.

And that's our hope is that they either find out, yes, this is what I wanna do, or nope, I want to go a different route.

And it really came from the Blue Ribbon of the investment in education.

Like in 2016 we saw that.

- [Narrator] Those dollars made a difference, but the impact got smaller over time.

- Our analyses of that situation we've discovered and pretty much calculated that not all of those dollars are getting to the teachers anymore.

Some of those monies have been reallocated to other needs.

And that's a concern because that allocation, that Blue Ribbon Task Force recommendation, and the increase in the sales tax was designed to go towards teacher compensation.

And it has not, at least not in this full impact.

- [Narrator] It's the same point Governor Kristi Noem made in her recent State of the State Address.

- Teacher salaries have not kept up with increased funding to education.

After this year, we will have raised funding to K-12 in South Dakota by more than 26% since I have been your Governor.

But teacher pay lags far behind and our teachers deserve better.

Yes, I know that schools have their own challenges, but I also know this, the Blue Ribbon recommendation wasn't just that teacher pay would go up, the Blue Ribbon promise was that teachers would be the first priority, that they would be paid more.

So let's do it.

- [Narrator] Lawmakers, lobbyists, and the Department of Education began a dialogue to make that happen.

A compromise emerged in the House Education Committee in mid-February.

House Bill 1048 establishes a state minimum teacher salary at $45,000 a year for fiscal year 2025.

From there, the minimum salary must go up by the same percentage increase the legislature approves for education each year.

If districts don't comply, they risk funding, and, in the most severe cases, accreditation.

- Boosting teacher numbers means boosting teacher pay.

- [Narrator] Secretary Graves says this approach benefits everyone.

- Teachers will benefit from higher and dependably increasing levels of compensation.

The profession will benefit as we attract more people to the field.

Districts will benefit as they're now offering better overall pay and compensation to their existing faculty members and prospective teachers.

I would also suggest that they will benefit from the definitive assurance to the legislature and Governor that what increases you provide to education will have the full effect on teacher pay.

In other words, the Blue Ribbon promises will be kept.

The state of South Dakota will benefit from an enhanced educational system, and South Dakota students, the place where the rubber meets the road will benefit as we better address the needs of teachers and reduce the impact of shortages.

It is important to know that ultimately, it is the students that will benefit.

- [Narrator] Education lobbyists like Sandra Waltman with the South Dakota Education Association and Doug Wermedal of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota also support the bill along with lawmakers like Speaker of the House Hugh Bartels and Representative Tony Venhuizen.

The bill is still moving through the legislative process, but even supporters of increased teacher pay understand that South Dakota needs ambition beyond moving out of the lowest paying states in the nation.

- I would like to see us go up in the rankings, but that can't be our principal goal.

Our principal goal needs to be that we're filling the teaching positions that we have and that we're filling them with good people.

- Teacher pay, always an important issue.

We're always gonna advocate for better wages and benefits for educators, but it's more than that.

It's about improving their working conditions.

We're seeing increase in workloads because the teacher shortage and not all positions are filled, so their workloads are increasing.

We're also seeing more behavioral issues at all levels from the early grades up into the high school.

And so when teachers, you know, burnout is becoming an issue, when they're not receiving the support that they deserve and they're not having the behavioral issues addressed, it becomes overwhelming, it becomes a mental health issue for them and their students.

And so that's why we're seeing people leave probably earlier than they had planned and people just not going into the profession like they used to.

- [Narrator] Some school districts have developed their own program to encourage students to become teachers.

The Teacher Pathway program in the Sioux Falls school district gives high schoolers a chance to learn more about the career and earn college credit through the University of South Dakota.

Gina Benz helped develop the program and teaches it at Roosevelt High School.

- Teacher Pathway has grown to tremendously for me.

This is actually a record breaking semester for me.

I had more students this semester than I've ever had in Teacher Pathway.

65 students at my school are looking at teaching.

- [Narrator] She knows not all of these students will become teachers.

- If nothing else, they're gaining an understanding of what happens in schools behind the curtain.

The whole public has an idea of what happens in schools because they went to school and they sat in the desks, the student desks.

But in Teacher Pathway, I pull back the curtain and they see the lesson planning, the flexibility, the quick thinking, the thinking about each student's unique needs, the school routines that they never even thought about when they were a student in the desk.

- [Narrator] It's a golden opportunity for students who are interested in teaching, like Roosevelt High School Junior Aiden Sanderson.

- Today I'm at JFK for practicum, which is every Thursday for Teacher Pathway.

Instead of going to first period, I just go sit in the kindergarten classroom and kind of just experience what being a teacher's like.

- [Narrator] And Sanderson knows better than most what goes into a career in teaching.

His mom works in this same elementary school.

So I think it's interesting that your mom is in education too.

So like, I'm sure you're well aware of kind of the harder things about being an educator.

How does that like play into your thoughts about it?

- It kind of makes me excited for it.

Like it makes me like more excited to like want to become a teacher because I know that everything's not gonna be perfect every single day.

And that's kind of like, I'm excited for the challenge.

I'm excited to deal with some kids who don't want to work, who don't want to do this or they're gonna act out.

That's what I want to help.

I wanna help those kids.

- My Pathway students are well aware that teaching is a very hard profession and that there's a lot of media out there portraying it as a nearly impossible profession.

And so we spend a lot of time talking about what can you do in your profession so that you can achieve longevity.

What are the strategies that will help you avoid burnout?

And one of the greatest strategies is to know what your boundaries are.

You do not have to be on every committee, you do not have to grade everything that a child does in class.

These kind of boundaries preserve a person's joy for the profession and help us avoid the burnout that is really disheartening because there's a lot of teachers burning out right now.

But I also encourage them to find their own strategies because it's different for different people in different situations.

- [Narrator] Since the Teacher Pathway program started in 2018, more than 500 students across the Sioux Falls school district have participated, and the district is just beginning to see the results.

- [Gina] What's really exciting is that this semester for the first time, I'm gonna be placing some of my current Teacher Pathway students in the classroom of one of my former Teacher Pathway students.

- [Narrator] This is the same classroom Aiden Sanderson is helping.

He encourages students who might not have considered a career in education to look into the opportunity anyway.

- Because like you learn so much more than just being a teacher.

You learn how to like manage yourself and manage yourself around others and treat others with more respect and understand.

I guess the one thing for me is I can understand how it is to be a student and I can understand how it is to be a teacher in a classroom and I have empathy for like how they run things and it's just like, I just overall understand the whole system better.

- [Narrator] That understanding is another key way to soften the impact of the teacher shortage.

And it's not limited to current students.

Gina Benz and Jackie Wilbur with USD's School of Education began a blog called "Teacher Talk" to share insights from their careers.

They also have a regular segment on SDPB's "In The Moment."

Gina Benz explains why they wanted to tell their stories.

- There's been a lot of media, a lot of social media that has shown teaching in a negative light.

And it is even teachers showing teaching in a negative light.

And I love my job and I have a lot of colleagues who love their jobs.

And so Dr. Wilbur and I wanted to put another voice out there to show that teaching is really wonderful, that it's full of purpose and meaning and connections, and something people should consider doing.

- So much of what we hear when it comes to reasons for the teacher shortage is 49th in pay in South Dakota.

How does that fit into what you observe?

- I think pay can be a factor, but I think even more so is the, I'll say political climate where people are very distrusting of teachers and school boards and administrators.

And that distrust, it hurts, it's pervasive and it also creates fear, paranoia that is very hard to live in day to day.

It's hard to be attacked from multiple fronts, but I keep coming back because the purpose in it, the idea that we can give people more options for their lives means a lot to me.

And so some people say too it's the pay, and pay is important, but we also get paid in happiness.

- [Narrator] The teacher shortage is as much about politics and a sense of purpose as it is about pay.

But programs like Teacher Pathway and Educators Rising are making good on the state's investment by inviting students to explore a future career and giving them the tools to succeed.

- So that they stay in the community, they grow in the community.

And as South Dakota is, we're made up of a lot of small communities.

And those communities need to thrive, and they'll thrive when they have high quality education and high quality teachers.

(gentle music)