Teachers and counselors play a vital and crucial role in the lives of students’ education at OHS. Currently OHS has a shortage of both teachers and counselors which has made the beginning of the year difficult on both fronts.

There is not a reason to worry because there are actions being taken to combat the ongoing teacher shortage. Administration is working hard to solve the teacher shortage at OHS.

“One of the biggest things with the teacher shortage is just finding qualified candidates. With our school being so large we have lots of teachers so when we have specific programs that lose a teacher, it can be a lot more cumbersome than others,” said Jonathan Smith, dean of students.

Smith recognizes that some positions at OHS like AP Computer Science can be difficult to find replacement teachers because of how specific their qualifications need to be.

“This year, where it’s probably affected us the most is with AP Computer Science because there is just such a small subset of people that could actually teach that class that when we lose a teacher who retired for example in this case, we don’t have a ton of applicants who even qualify to teach it,” Smith said.

Teaching is not the only place where there are shortages. Counseling also has a shortage on their hands.

“Here at O’Conner we should have six counselors and when one of our counselors left because her husband transferred to England, we were not able to find a candidate,” said Kathleen Giacini, school counselor department lead.

The beginning of the year has been difficult with the teaching shortage at O’Conner.

“It’s been rough the last few weeks for sure. We’re getting teachers that perhaps don’t have the same level of experience even [as] the traditional college educated teacher. We have [teachers] that are doing student teaching at the same time as being an educator here,” Smith said.

Teaching may give educators the opportunity to get emergency certification to help get positions filled, but there isn’t something like that for counseling. 

“[Potential teachers are] able to do things like get emergency certification even if they’re not a certified teacher yet, but that doesn’t exist for counseling right now,” Giacini said.

Although teaching can provide things like emergency certification, it can still be hard to find someone to fill certain positions because of how specific they are.

“Any of the CTE classes are very difficult to have long term solutions for because they are so specific. It was a challenge on that front with all those CTE classes, but I think it’s just because you have to be a subject matter expert in those fields to really know how to teach those things,” Smith said.

CTE classes can be hard to get someone to teach the class because of how specific it is and how few of those teachers there are on campus. 

“With CTE classes we only have one Computer Science teacher on campus; we only have one marketing or accounting teacher on campus so if we’re trying to replace those individuals, it’s difficult because there’s not a support structure for them,” Smith said.

With the counselor shortage, counselors would be satisfied with someone that has less experience as long as they match some of their preferred qualities.

“What we want more than anything [is]…a person that is happy to work here, enjoys being around the kids, is someone who would be a team player in helping our students,” Giacini said.

For new counseling hires, it is important for them to have value in being a teammate and having the best interest in students at OHS.

“The rest of the stuff, we could teach them, but you can’t teach someone how to be a good team player and someone who is going to really advocate for kids so we try to find a good personality fit above everything else,” Giacini said.

With these shortages, it is important to look at the data in order to understand the core of the issue.

“If you look at the data from some of the colleges, year to year enrollment for teacher programs at four year universities has continued to decrease year to year. What that means is that there are less people going into teacher programs and less people getting degrees with teaching in mind,” Smith said.

With the decrease of enrollment in teacher programs, there will be less candidates applying for teaching jobs that may come up across the state.

“It’s not anyone’s specific problem, but when you have less people getting degrees for a field that you have to have a degree for you’re going to have less people as a pool of new candidates so when you have retirees leaving and the pool of teachers coming in isn’t able to replace the exit group, you start to have problems like shortages,” Smith said.

With fewer people going into college and getting degrees in fields like teaching and counseling at schools, there are also outside elements like pay that may impact where teachers that do go to college choose to apply. 

“There are certainly a handful of school districts in the Phoenix area that pay really well. It could be that they have not seen the counselor shortage as much because maybe now is the time that people who are looking to make a move for more money might go to a district that pays more,” Giacini said.

Within the past few years, the general public has said things online that could have made potential teachers change their mind about their career path. This in turn causes shortages.

“I think part of it was optically there is a lot of resentment for schools and for teachers specifically with the online curriculum and there was a lot of stuff in the press on how bad schools were for closing down. If you’re a new teacher in school and you’re being told that you’re awful or that you would be awful in that position, it would possibly get people to think differently about going into the profession,” Smith said.

Even though there are less people going into teaching, there are things being done to keep teachers and counselors here at OHS which gives them reasons to stay and come.

“Both Mrs. Heath and my kids all went through Deer Valley District and it’s kind of similar in the other high schools. There are counselors who stay here whether you can make more or not, [they] stay because this is where [they]’re connected to, it’s [their] community, [their] kids go here,” Giacini said.

The community at OHS is a benefit that attracts people to come and keeps them at the school for many years to come.

“Hopefully we’ll find some people that really want to be in our community because it is a really good school to work at for. It’s not always just the paycheck, sometimes it’s also the school itself that they want to work; we do have that going for us,” Giacini said.