By Heidi de Marco - Kaiser Health News
Lynette Henley needed another year to retire so she could receive her full pension after 40 years as a teacher, but she wasn't convinced it was worth the risk.
That's why the 65-year-old teacher, who suffers from diabetes and congestive heart failure, retired last June as a math and history teacher at Hogan High School in Vallejo, California, whose students are primarily black and Hispanic.
"You're in a classroom of 16 to 20 kids and a lot of them haven't been vaccinated against
COVID-19 ,
"
says Henley.
“I just didn't feel safe.
Teaching classes was not worth dying for.
Henley, who is black, is part of a national wave of teachers leaving the profession, especially teachers who teach minorities.
Amid the toxic alchemy of death, illness, and school closures during the pandemic, this mass recall of experienced teachers has created extra stress for students.
The California Teacher Retirement System reported a 26% increase in the number of teacher retirements in the second half of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019.
Nearly 300 teachers absent from schools due to coronavirus in Kansas City
Jan. 18, 202200:35
More than half of those surveyed cited the challenges of teaching during the pandemic as their main reason for retiring.
A national survey released by the National Education Association on February 1 found that 55% of teachers planned to retire early, up from 37% in August 2021.
The numbers were higher among black educators (62% ) and Latinos (59%).
The problem was palpable in January, when in-person classes resumed in Southern California.
In some large districts, more than a quarter of students missed the first week.
Some of those who returned to the classrooms did not have their teachers, who had to be replaced by low-qualified substitutes.
Bryan Monroy, an 11th-grade physics teacher at Lennox Mathematics, Science & Technology Academy, in Los Angeles, found the school half empty after winter break.
Bryan Monroy, a physics professor in Los Angeles, says he has struggled with the idea of leaving the profession.
Heidi de Marco/KHN
Five teachers were missing, about a fifth of the charter school's staff, suspected of having COVID-19 or caring for family members, the 29-year-old Monroy said.
That, coupled with an underlying problem of hiring and keeping staff, she says.
“We hired some people to teach Chemistry and Math, and for various reasons they had to quit in the middle of the year during the pandemic with no one to replace them,” he says.
"The children had to finish their year with substitutes and assistants, and that was very difficult for them."
Faced with early retirement, they hire less qualified teachers
The coronavirus has been harder on teachers of color because many of them return to the communities where they grew up and have suffered the most, Monroy says.
Its students are nearly all Hispanic and about 75% receive free or reduced-price lunch.
As the son of Mexican immigrants, he says he understands the problems they face.
"Because there are so many similarities that resonate between me and my children, vicarious trauma is also even more real."
[The Government of California will eliminate the mandate for the use of masks in closed public places]
Multiple studies have shown that
minority teachers such as blacks and Latinos help students of the same origin have better educational outcomes.
But black and Hispanic teachers tend to have shorter teaching careers than their white colleagues, according to a report from the US Department of Education, citing a lack of support and poor working conditions as the driver for early retirements.
“It is hiding part of history”: teachers fight against censorship of racial issues in the classroom
Feb. 11, 202205:45
According to a 2019 study by the Learning Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in Palo Alto, teacher shortages affect 80% of California school districts, and most severely those with low-income families and colored students.
To make up the gap, schools have hired ill-prepared substitutes, exacerbating learning difficulties, said Tara Kini, chief of staff and state policy director for the Learning Policy Institute.
Another study by his group found that schools with more minorities were four times more likely than majority-white schools to employ non-certified teachers.
The drop in standardized test scores in California last year revealed a widening learning gap
between white, black and Latino students.
Just over a third of black and Hispanic students met or exceeded standards in English, compared to 60% of whites.
In math, only about a fifth of black and Hispanic students met or exceeded standards, compared to nearly half of white students.
A fifth-grade teacher helps a student with a lesson on the computer during class.Allison Shelley for All4Ed/EDU
Relative to 2018, Hispanic students' scores fell 12 percentage points in English.
White students' scores fell 5 percentage points, while black students' scores stayed about the same, on average.
[Will the mask protect me even if no one is wearing it? This is what the experts say]
Online learning has been more difficult for the poorest children, contributing to difficulties for their teachers.
In July 2020, the University of Southern California and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools surveyed more than 1,100 families in the Los Angeles Unified School District whose children attend historically low-income public schools.
They found that about 1 in 6 had no internet access and about 1 in 12 only had internet on their cell phones.
Additionally, 1 in 7 said they never had a space free of noise or distractions.
Teaching in person with the threat of COVID-19 is living in a constant state of anxiety for some teachers, because a single positive test in the classroom can disrupt all teaching plans in a second, says Katie Caster, manager of curriculum and assessment. of Latinos for Education in Boston, a group that mentors new teachers.
Caster said teachers of color have an added burden.
“They have to try harder all the time, whether it's because of the cultural gap, the language, being asked to translate, or connecting families with resources.
The pandemic has exacerbated the problem.”
Teachers question their career
That problem was already reflected in a 2019 study by the nonprofits Teach Plus and the Education Trust, which found that teachers of color feel pressure to take on extra work to help students who share their demographic background.
Monroy said the pandemic made him question his career.
"Before the pandemic I was 100% sure that I would continue teaching and retire as a teacher," says Monroy.
"Now, feeling fear of coming to work instead of enthusiasm, I have doubts about reaching the end of the year, and even more about retiring here."
At Los Angeles County's San Gabriel High School, where nearly three-quarters of the 1,777 students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, grades dipped during the year of virtual learning, says music teacher Benjamin Coria.
"These students were busy with things related to the pandemic, like taking care of their siblings or working," he says.
Benjamin Coria, band director at San Gabriel High School, says dealing with family issues and trying to find a way to separate work from home, while raising two children, has been a challenge. Heidi de Marco /KHN
Coria's school is part of the Alhambra Unified School District, where absenteeism was 27% in the first week back to school, beginning January 3.
In the neighboring district of Los Angeles, the absentee rate was 31% when classes resumed on January 11.
(As of February 4, the Los Angeles Unified School District's truancy rate had dropped to 13%; Alhambra was unable to provide updated figures.)
The Alhambra district, whose teachers are 70% of color, hired 286 substitutes to help fill the gaps of sick or furloughed teachers.
In many cases, district administrators themselves act as alternates.
Still, the school has had to plan special days out to help teachers catch up.
The pandemic has also taken its toll on Coria.
Her father died just before the pandemic and she lost a grandfather to COVID-19 a year later.
Complicated school and work schedules have exacerbated daily challenges for him, his wife and his two children.
“All of these things that would normally be difficult are much more difficult in this environment,” says Coria, 39, who has taught for 16.
But Coria, whose parents were first-generation Mexican Americans, will not retire.
She does her best to stay upbeat in the classroom, she says, and smiles even when she doesn't feel like it.
"We're leaders," he says. "If we're not in a good mood, then the students won't be. I try my best to make the environment a little more positive, even for myself."
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is the newsroom of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), which produces in-depth journalism on health issues. Along with Policy Analysis and Surveys, KHN is one of the three main programs of KFF. KFF is a nonprofit organization that provides health information to the nation.