Days ahead of the first day of school, officials at Ontario High School messaged parents that “unexpected teacher shortages and unfilled positions” at the high school resulted in fewer course options and an elective class being dropped.
Principal Ken Martinez said the school is down four teachers – two math instructors, one social studies teacher and a culinary arts instructor. Until the school can employ a culinary teacher, it cannot offer students the culinary arts career and technical education program, Martinez said.
Martinez said those positions were staffed last year. The math teachers and social studies instructor left the district for other opportunities while the head of the culinary program retired, according to Martinez.
Meantime, Martinez said the teacher shortages have caused “tension” in the school’s “master schedule,” which officials create in the spring based off student enrollment that year.
As the summer went by and the district couldn’t fill the vacancies, those students had to be placed in others classes ahead of the first day of school, according to Martinez.
That occurred days before the school messaged parents and students on Wednesday, Aug. 14 through the district’s messaging system, ParentVUE that while the school was able to accommodate most requests for classes, some elective requests could not be filled due to teacher shortages.
He said those teachers would each have 25 students, so that works out to 100 kids each class period that had to be placed in other classes and a different elective.
Martinez said what classes students were placed in or what alternative electives they moved into varied. For instance, he said, a student might have been placed in computer science or welding class instead of the culinary tract.
As for math, he said it might work out to that there are fewer class periods available for some topics, such as algebra or geometry. That would result in more students per class.
When the district forecasts its schedule, students rank their elective choices. Martinez said sometimes, students get their second choice depending on available space. If students can’t get their first or second pick, they might end up in study hall or become a library or office aide, he said.
Martinez said there would be some “variation,” but generally the geometry classes would tend to see more students and he estimated that there would be up to 35 students in those classes. He said some students switch to a different type of math offering, such as a finance math course.
The teacher shortages come at a time when districts across the country struggle to fill open educator positions. According to a Brown University study, there are 55,000 vacant full-time teaching positions across the U.S.
Oregon ranks among the lowest for teacher-to-student ratio, 56 teachers per 1,000 students, according to research by Scholaroo, a scholarship search platform. In Ontario, enrollment is up roughly 150 more students from last year, according to Martinez
Martinez said the district is interviewing candidates for the open positions. On Monday, officials interviewed a social studies instructor and on Wednesday, a culinary arts teacher.
Martinez said he wants people to understand that the district wants to staff these positions and that he and his staff are not “dragging their feet.”
“We want to find candidates that are the right fit and can restore the opportunities for kids where we can,” Martinez said.
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