South Bay students continue to struggle with teacher shortages

Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Mosaic Journalism Workshop for Bay Area high school students, a two-week intensive course in journalism. Students in the program report and photograph stories under the guidance of professional journalists.

Throughout the Bay Area, teacher shortages remain one of the most challenging and enduring issues schools face, affecting the quality of education students receive.

Many students are being taught by new, inexperienced teachers or by substitutes working on emergency teaching credentials, meaning they may lack the training to effectively teach a class.

Even as the state continues to face thousands of teacher vacancies each year, the number of people who receive teaching credentials drastically decreased last school year, leaving little hope for a swift resolution to this pressing issue.

Downtown College Prep Alum Rock High School’s principal Joyce Davis noticed the lack of teachers at the small charter school just before the start of last school year.

Davis was shocked to find that the class schedule showed multiple teacher positions in core subjects as “to be determined.”

“It was scary,” Davis said.

Lacking biology, chemistry, and other core subject teachers at the charter school in East San Jose left administrators scrambling to find people to fill classrooms. Many times, administrators themselves were the ones overseeing classes.

“I was subbing classes, my leadership team was in classes … Our central office people came to be in classrooms teaching because we did not have [teachers],” Davis said.

Because of this shortage, Jorge Garcia Diaz, a rising senior at DCP Alum Rock High School, took Biology I last school year through the online learning company Edgenuity, which provides schools and students with remote courses.

Edgenuity classes were common in schools like DCP that lacked core subject teachers and were used as an alternative for students to earn the credits required for graduation.

Many students like Garcia, however, did not have a positive experience with this online alternative, which reminded them of the problems with online learning during the height of the pandemic.

“[I]t feels like I’m much less engaged and much less willing to pay attention to the subject,” Garcia said. “Having to be stuck on a screen and not having any hands-on learning makes it a lot harder to stay focused and stay engaged.”

Despite their convenience, online programs like Edgenuity can’t provide the experience students used to project-based learning expect.

“I felt like I was really missing out,” Garcia said.

According to a 2023 report by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, California had more than 10,000 teacher vacancies statewide in the 2021-22 school year.

The commission reported the number of people issued teaching credentials in 2021-22 dropped by nearly 25%, to the lowest level in five years.

The acute teacher shortage means students next school year will once again have to deal with a parade of substitute teachers and online learning “solutions” that all fall short of having an experienced, physical teacher in the classroom.

Jesus Cano, a recent graduate of San Jose High School, dealt with a rotating set of substitute teachers in his mathematics class this year due to the lack of teachers at his high school. Three months into the school year, Cano and his peers still had no regular math teacher.

“It affected how I was learning,” Cano said. “My grades started dropping, and I had to [constantly] adapt to the new teachings of different teachers.”

Cano says he had three substitutes teaching his math class that kept “switching back and forth” in the subject material throughout the school year. That didn’t work out well for him or his peers, he said.

Yimer said a friend faced an especially challenging year in their mathematics class which was being taught by a substitute teacher.

“He didn’t have a teacher to teach him,” Yimer said. His friend struggled so much to the point that they ended up failing the course and having to enroll in summer school to recover credits, Yimer said.

“It sucks for students especially since they’re missing out [on] the point of classes,” Yimer said. “No one’s there to teach them.”

Cuitlahuac Ramirez Borrego is a 2023 graduate of Downtown College Prep Alum Rock High School in San Jose.