Teacher Shortage Leaves L.A. Unified Scrambling : Schools: Instructors with emergency credentials fill hundreds of positions. Many lack classroom experience.

An airline worker whose company folded. A laid-off engineer. A down-on-his-luck real estate agent. These victims of California’s battered economy and scores of others like them have been crowding offices of the Los Angeles Unified School District for a week, hoping to land new jobs as public school teachers.

Stable work, a starting salary of $26,000 a year, medical benefits and the chance to help children were enough of a lure for many of these unemployed, college-educated professionals, despite a bitter teachers union dispute that wracked the district last year, ending with an unprecedented 10% pay cut and morale at an all-time low.

“This is about economics,” said Garry Holm, 34, a former real estate agent hit hard by the plummeting Southern California housing market. “I’m basically unemployed. For me, anything is good. . . . Even though there are problems with the school district, it is still better than where I came from.”

Every new teacher like Holm--who will teach fifth grade--fills a void left by a more experienced teacher. With the opening of the fall semester Tuesday, the district has been scrambling to fill 650 to 700 vacancies, more than it has had in the past 10 years, officials said.

About half the teachers being hired have little or no classroom experience and have qualified for a position with emergency credentials, which require a bachelor’s degree and passing grades on state and federal skills tests and medical exams. In addition to meeting those requirements, teachers with full credentials have taken a fifth year of college, including training in teaching methods.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein, who predicted a “brain drain” of teachers last spring, criticized the district for its lack of foresight on teacher flight.

“An emergency credentialed teacher is like an emergency credentialed surgeon. I don’t know anyone who wants to be cut open by a person like that,” Bernstein said. “I suppose to someone who is unemployed, teaching is better than nothing. But that is some young person’s life who is being put in their hands.”

Assistant Supt. Irene Yamahara, head of the personnel division, said Tuesday that the district, with a teaching force of about 32,000, is in a constant hiring mode. She added that even though the office is unusually busy this fall, the last-minute rush to hire teachers is typical of the beginning of any school year.

School officials have provided substitute teachers so that no classrooms are without supervision. By the end of business Tuesday, the district had offered 961 teacher contracts, but it was not known how many would be accepted. District officials said they believe that all elementary school openings have been filled.

This fall, Yamahara said, “there is a whole series of problems at work. It’s not just the pay cut. . . . Teachers are leaving the city because of crime and violence. As a city, as a school district, we need to improve our image. . . . Things are catching up with us.”

Furthermore, teacher recruiting efforts have been scaled back because of budget cuts, Yamahara said. The district offers several programs to train teachers, but the demand cannot be met in all areas.

More than half the vacancies are in the hardest-to-fill areas: special education, bilingual education, math and science. Teachers with these credentials are in such high demand that they can find jobs virtually anywhere in the state.

Hiring emergency credentialed teachers is “not by any means our first priority” said Michael Acosta, head of teacher employment. “But when we are short of full credentialed teachers we have few other options. . . . There is an emergency situation and we must have emergency teachers.”

Nancy Cohen of Sherman Oaks, a mother of two children enrolled in the district, said she wants her youngsters to be assigned to a qualified and experienced teacher and expressed concern that hasty hiring may not yield the best teachers.

“Some teachers who are not experienced are excellent. But I hope people are not just teaching because they need a job,” Cohen said. “I want them to teach because they love children.”

Tom Cody, hired Monday to teach fifth grade at a San Fernando Valley school, said he decided to take the plunge into teaching after losing his job as an operations manager with Eastern Airlines, which folded in 1991. He said he could not find satisfaction in another airline-related job.

Cody said he has so enjoyed coaching suburban sports that he decided to give teaching a try. But, he admitted, “I’m extremely nervous. I’m shaking in my boots. I’ve never done the academic part of teaching. I thought now I could get paid for what I have been doing on a volunteer basis with coaching.”

A newspaper advertisement prompted Maria Schneider, 28, to give up her hopes of finding a teaching job at a college and take on a class of second-graders.

“There aren’t many jobs for professors, but there are plenty for teachers,” said Schneider, who is bilingual in Spanish. “I just hope I can bring a little bit of the light of knowledge to my students.”

Another teacher, Elaine Bienenfeld, 65, is a double statistic. She retired in June, disgusted with the 10% pay cut. She was rehired Tuesday as a substitute teacher, filling a sorely needed special education position at North Hollywood High School.

“I said the hell with this and I quit,” Bienenfeld recalled. She said she was drawn back to the classroom because she is devoted to her students. “But now I am working on my own terms,” she added. “It’s very nice.”

For the 700 new teachers standing at the head of the class for the first time this fall, Bernstein, a veteran high school history instructor, offered this advice:

“Believe me, the people standing in that line at the district are going to be in for a big shock. For anyone to assume they can walk off the street and the next day be a classroom teacher, they are absolutely fooling themselves. My first advice to those people is to find another job.”

* SCHOOL SHOOTING: A 15-year-old boy is critically wounded at Dorsey High. B1