RICHMOND — John F. Kennedy High School was so flush with teachers in the 1960s and ’70s that staff boasted of their pioneering food services training program and nationally ranked speech and debate team, alongside typical core classes and extracurricular activities.
Now, there are so few bodies on campus that current educators like Raka Ray, who teaches biology and chemistry to sophomores and upperclassmen, are essentially on call each morning to sub in other classrooms during their prep times. If no one is certified to teach a certain subject, she said, some teachers essentially chaperone class periods, if the school hasn’t already tapped a long-term substitute or remote instructor from the Midwest to Zoom in for the day.
“It’s exhausting, and the mental toll has been really, really high,” Ray said. “It feels like if you’re not at 100% you’re letting your kids down, even though the issue is actually structural.”
The teacher shortage crisis has rippled across California for decades, but the situation at three schools in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District has become so dire that it’s actually violating students’ civil rights, according to three legal “Williams” complaints filed last week. Attorneys say administrators at John F. Kennedy High School and Stege Elementary School in Richmond, as well as Helms Middle School five miles south in San Pablo, are trying to address their disproportionate number of teacher vacancies illegally.
Ray, a 33-year-old who commutes from Oakland and has taught at both Kennedy and Helms since 2017, said students’ academic performance suffers without access to permanent, qualified teachers. The problem is twofold for these WCCUSD schools, which serve large populations of low-income, non-white and multilingual learners — many of whom are still learning English and have individualized education programs. Ray was one of a handful of parents and educators who shared their concerns at the West Contra Costa Unified School District meeting Wednesday, urging the board to stop putting a band-aid on its epidemic of burnout.
“I want to be able to come into class from a place of empathy and serve my students, and I think (the current situation) chips away at my soul,” she said, adding that the increase in behavioral issues and learning difficulties after the pandemic is exacerbating the impact of vacancies in WCCUSD. “There really isn’t a sustainable plan to keep teachers in the job — if you’re still doing it at this point.”
Karissa Provenza, a law fellow at Public Advocates — the same nonprofit law firm that filed the landmark Williams v. California class action lawsuit that became the namesake for the legal complaint process to report teacher vacancies, insufficient instructional materials and facility conditions nearly 20 years ago — said she worked on these issues with WCCUSD teachers for a year before stepping in to represent them.
She said state law requires school districts to correct teacher vacancies and unlawful assignments within 30 days, in addition to crafting sustainable solutions for the long run, and anyone can file a complaint without a lawyer.
Now already halfway into the school year, many classes at Kennedy, Helms and Stege have not had a permanent instructor for months.
This has created an unsustainable cycle for the highest-need WCCUSD schools, which are often staffed by early career educators with five or fewer years of experience, according to Francisco Ortiz, a 5th grade teacher at Ford Elementary in Richmond and vice president of the United Teachers of Richmond union.
Even if teachers can weather the instability that comes with vacancies, he said it’s been hard to keep them around without salaries or benefits that could counter that stress, especially when neighboring districts in cities like Berkeley, Albany and Martinez all pay better. So why does he continue to stay at WCCUSD, despite being priced out of Richmond after living there for 30 years and teaching for 11? He and many others want to provide some sense of stability for schools where students feel the most disenfranchised and least connected.
“I don’t want to leave the community in which I grew up and love teaching,” Ortiz said. “I want to stay, but it’s becoming more difficult and untenable, especially for our early career educators who are splitting houses with five or six people or even sharing a room.”
In turn, he said chronic absenteeism is spiking in high schools, as students increasingly opt out of classes that don’t have a steady teacher that would care, or even decide that getting a job to help support their family is a better use of that time. But beyond WCCUSD’s internal issues, he called for continued reforms to statewide budget and funding practices, which he said is vital to help make it economically feasible for more people to become teachers and retain the educators already established in the community.
“We need legislative changes at the state level, which is potentially going to take multiple districts — both large urban and small rural — to advocate,” he said. “While these are larger systemic issues, apparently (our district) is currently doing something that is not legal, so let’s address that first.”
Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent of public instruction who is also running for governor this year, wrote an op-ed in December about how challenging it’s become for the state to train and retain its educators, who have been severely underpaid for decades but must now also contend rising inflation.
During the 2021-22 school year, he said there was a 16% reduction in new teacher credentials – the first decline in nearly a decade – and more than 10,000 total teacher vacancies, which were particularly concentrated in rural, non-white and low-income communities, according to data from the California Department of Education. Additionally, he said a recent survey found that a third of all teachers would likely quit within the next two years.
Several new programs and laws have tried to stop this educational exodus.
The state has recently expanded financial initiatives to recruit and retain teachers in California, including $500 million for Golden State Teacher Grants, $350 million for teacher residency programs and $1.5 billion for the Educator Effectiveness Block Grant. Last year, legislators also attempted to pass a bill that would have funded a 50% raise for teachers and other school workers’ salaries within seven years.
Raechelle Forrest, WCCUSD’s interim communications director, said the district is actively engaged in those efforts, including streamlining the timeline that retired teachers can return to campuses in line with a new state law passed last year.
Despite recently approved cuts to 120 positions for the 2024-25 school year and ever-looming bankruptcy fears, she said the district has enough money to afford candidates to fill all existing vacancies. Forrest said WCCUSD is actively recruiting by hosting job fairs, posting positions online and partnering with local universities.
In the meantime, the lack of support has been exhausting for teachers like Sam Cleare, who filed the complaint against administrators at Stege Elementary School in Richmond, where she leads classes with both 4th and 5th graders.
However, the 29-year-old educator feels more inspired now than when she first started teaching seven years ago — supported by the connections she’s forged with colleagues who are equally spread thin but still fighting for their classrooms.
“I feel a lot of hope, but I’m extremely tired,” Cleare said. “It’s really sad to see former students that are now taller than me, and just knowing that they haven’t gotten the education they deserve.”
