INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Public Schools students head back to school Monday.
This comes as the school district unveiled a report Thursday on where it stands with teaching and support staff positions that need to be filled.
District officials said staffing turnovers and hiring are constant with people coming and going all year round. When it comes to vacancies, they said the numbers are about the same as they were last year.
The district has 152 teacher openings going into the 2023-24 school year. That number was revealed Thursday to the IPS board in a report from the district on staffing.
District leaders said those positions will be filled by substitutes until the district makes more permanent hires.
What's unclear is when the district will be able to fill that spot with a permanent teacher.
"It gets pretty dire pretty quick when staffing positions are not filled because, ultimately, it's kids that suffer when we can't provide these services and there are just not options right now when somebody is not in a position to make up those services ... and what do we do in the absence of a person in that spot," Joe Kwicz, president of the Indiana Council of Administrators of Special Education.
The vacancies are mostly at the high school level in special education, math and science. That's compared to 1,300 teaching positions that are filled.
"Our principals are fully aware of where those gaps are, and they have been making plans along the way, whether that is combining classrooms or having a different adult substitute, for example, to be present to be sure we can cover those classroom vacancies," IPS Superintendent Dr. Aleesia Johnson said.
When it comes to school support positions, the district has 204 openings. Just over 900 positions have someone in them.
Some of the vacancies were filled by staff already employed by IPS after the district's "Rebuilding Stronger" plan led to shifts in staffing with the closure of six district schools.
Three hundred employees were impacted by those closures. None of them were laid off.
The district calls that a first.
"We were able to guarantee 100% impacted RBS staff a role in the district for the '23-'24 school year. We stayed committed to that. We held true to that," said Sandy Bombick, IPS director of employment opportunities.
The plan and those closures are part of the way IPS is addressing declining enrollment numbers. Even as the start of the 2023-24 school year is here, district leaders said they're already working on staffing for the 2024-25 school year.
Initiatives to help teaching profession
Kwicz said to help fill the gaps, education has become an attractive profession.
"Across the country, teacher prep programs and enrollments are down almost 40%, so there are a significant amount of people just simply not going into the field of special education," Kwicz said.
The low turnout is causing concern.
"What I fear happening as people do not enroll in programs at the university level and they are not profitable at some point, then programs dry up and so our pipelines dry up even more than they are right now," Kwicz said.
According to Kwicz, the state is working on two initiatives to help with the teacher shortage in special education.
One program is called ISEAL, which stands for Indiana Special Education and Assisted Licensure. The state is allocating funding through the Department of Education for the program.
"The state will help pay candidates to go back to the universities to add special education licensure credentials to their license. There's currently about 800 people in that," Kwicz said.
Another program is called ASSET, or Aspiring Statewide Special Education Teacher.
"A currently licensed teacher can add a mild or intense intervention endorsement to their existing teaching license. It's a program that breaks down the barriers of time and money. There's no cost to the candidate," Kwicz said.
The goal is to get more people interested in education so they can one day fill the gaps in school districts like IPS.
If you are interested in becoming a teacher in Indianapolis Public Schools, visit the district's website.