Teachers in high demand across the Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Although it’s still summer, the new school year is quickly approaching, with several Bay Area schools desperately in need of more teachers.

The chairs are empty and so are the basketball courts but in a few weeks, if not mere days – school will be back in session. The question for many districts is – will there be enough teachers?

“We are super committed to a teacher being in every classroom on the first day,” says Kristin Bijur, Head of Human Resources for SFUSD. School starts in San Francisco in two weeks and the district is short 123 teachers. “It’s difficult for a lot of us in the public school districts and we have the added difficulty in San Francisco of our cost of housing. It’s hard for teachers to live in San Francisco for early career teachers.”

It’s not just SFUSD, but across the Bay Area, state and nation – the teacher shortage is hitting hard and the ads are promising pay raises and a stable career. Ads even say a teaching credential is not necessary. 

“We can do an emergency permit, an emergency credential for a person who has a bachelors degree – bachelors of arts, a bachelors of science and certain number of credits related to whatever it is they’re going to teach. So, it’s actually possible for someone who doesn’t have a teaching credential, but has an interest in being an educator right now to come and try it out,” Bijur told KPIX5.

Hundreds, if not thousands of vacancies still persist.

23 year veteran Bay Area English teacher John Carey says the chief factor for teachers stepping away from students and classrooms is money – particularly in the expensive Bay Area. “We had an amazing teacher who moved to Southern California. We had an amazing teacher that went back to school to become a lawyer just because in both cases – “I can’t see myself doing this for this amount of money,” Carey told KPI5. It’s not just being underpaid, but two years of teaching in a pandemic has driven teachers out education. 

“There’s the financial aspect of the teacher shortage but I think there’s also the people aspect of the teacher shortage and it’s a very different ball game right now. I like to tell people if it had been my first year of teaching that we were teaching on zoom, then I wouldn’t have had a second year.”

So, now days away from the opening school bell in Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco and beyond – the plea is identical. “We want you now. We need you now,” said Bijur.