Tennessee school districts will be rounding up more high schoolmath teachers than ever this year.
This year’s rising seniors must take four years of math in high school, a stiffer graduation requirement than the three years demanded of previous grads.
For Wilson County schools, it has meant cutting out more electives and career and technical courses to make room in the schedule for math. Metro school officials say some principals may also shift positions within their schools to cover the needs.
Metro has hired six new math teachers and still has 26 openings in math for the fall but says it isn’t finding any shortage of teachers.
“We are adding math teachers to accommodate the requirements,” said Jay Steele, Metro’s associate superintendent for high schools. “However, we are not having any issues finding math teachers because of early recruitment, Teach For America and the Nashville Teaching Fellows.”
Rutherford County school officials hired 11 new math teachers but haven’t reduced other course offerings, spokesman James Evans said.
“It’s always harder to find certain types of teachers, such as math, special education, foreign language, etc., but so far, we’ve been able to find good candidates,” he said. “For the past several years, we’ve hosted our own teacher recruitment fair in May … and had more than 800 candidates attend.”
Wilson County school officials said they had to eliminate 10 teaching positions to make room for more math classes.
There has been less demand for career and technical education, physical education and exploratory classes such as drama, but the district has added four math teachers in the high schools.
Wilson struggles to find teachers
Unlike Metro, Wilson County has a hard time finding strong math teachers, and Director of Schools Mike Davis said he’s waiting to see whether Metro’s proposal to increase starting teacher pay to $40,000 a year will make matters worse.
“If that passes, Metro will blow us out of the water,” Davis said.
The new standards have added to the typical shuffling of personnel that happens at the end of every school year, Davis said.
The 10 teachers who lost their jobs will be able to reapply for other positions as they open, officials said.
Williamson County school officials say they aren’t hiring more teachers, other than for student growth. A Sumner County spokesman didn’t respond for comment.
The change stems from the Tennessee Diploma Project to make high school courses more challenging and students better prepared for college.
It increased the total high school credits required for students from 20 credits to 22 starting in fall 2009.
Students will be required to take algebra 1, algebra 2, geometry and another higher-level math course for a total of four credits.
Students were also made to take an additional half credit of physical education and a half credit of personal finance. For information on the new requirements, visit www.tn.gov/education/gradreq.shtml.
