With just under 3 weeks to go before Hartford’s beautiful and capable children head back to the classroom, the Superintendent’s office is reporting that Hartford Public Schools is on track to begin the year short 64 teachers.  The district says that is an “improvement” over the 92 they were without on the first day of school last year. 

Hopefully the district will be able to improve on the 32 teachers per month leaving the district, HPS’ poor retention rate over the first 7 months of last school year.  This may be too much to ask for, however, as a teacher from the Noah Webster recently told me that her school alone has lost 7 teachers since school let out for the summer.

During the the 2022-23 school year, nearly 250 teachers left HPS.  If the district spent more effort and money on teacher retention, they would save nearly a half-million dollars a year spent on recruiting and that 64 number would be zero in three weeks.  That’s three more non-profits which Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez could dig up and hand a contract to do the work which district personnel cannot.

While giving us an update on HPS’ teacher shortage problem, a problem still afflicting districts across the country (New Haven and their new Superintendent, Madeline Negron, former HPS academics chief, will be starting the year with 103 teaching vacancies), HPS assistant propaganda director, Julia Skrobak, stated that “"Special education continues to be one of our hardest areas to fill… However, we also have less vacancies in special education now than we did at this point last year.”  And in keeping with district policy and practice, we’re not going to reveal actual numbers to back up that statement, just trust us when we say things like this.

Naturally the 64 vacancies are an improvement over last year, but after looking at the data provided by State Education Commission Charlene Russell-Tucker along with the HPS announcement, we realize that, yes, roses have thorns.

There are currently 1,300 certified teacher job openings statewide (5% of them in Hartford), with 60% of these openings being in  Connecticut’s Alliance Districts, of which Hartford is one.  Sixty percent of 1,300 is 780, which means that among the 36 designated Alliance Districts, the average district vacancy number is 22 teachers.  HPS has a number nearly 3 times the average.

Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez told a crowd at a May MARG NRZ meeting that teachers should apply to Hartford Public Schools because they (unlike neighboring districts?) “are committed to supporting our educators.”  Despite our teacher vacancy rate being 3 times that of districts in similar circumstances.

Eventually, HPS will no longer be able to lean on COVID related excuses for their shortage, or on the fact that the whole country is feeling similar pain.  When it comes to educating children, there can be no wait and see attitudes, no “leaps of faith” votes of approval.  It requires an immediate solution.   State and local political leaders must act now on HPS’ unproven and uninspiring leadership before they find themselves as substitute teachers in Hartford.