Retirements Magnify O.C. Teacher Needs

Retired teacher Sharon Clunk can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu.

Nearly 40 years ago, amid the baby boom, schools seemed to pop up overnight, with administrators scouring the country to meet the phenomenal demand for new teachers spurred by the postwar population growth. Clunk, fresh out of college in 1958, was swept from her South Dakota hometown to teach in the Garden Grove Unified School District.

Fast forward to 1996, with another aggressive drive in California for new teachers, this one created by the prospect of more state money for districts that decrease class sizes in primary grades.

“What’s happening is just mind-boggling,” said Clunk, 60. In 1958, she added, “I was doing some of the same things the young teachers are now doing.”

But today there is a key difference: Just as districts scramble to find teachers, those hired like Clunk during the boom are expected to retire in staggering numbers that will greatly thin the teacher work force.

The question on many administrators’ minds: How will schools prepare for the twin challenge of replacing retiring veteran teachers while continuing to hire others to meet the demands of class-size reduction?

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Educators count California’s current rush to reduce class sizes and the baby boom era as two of the state’s most aggressive efforts to recruit teachers en mass.

For the past few months, districts have madly recruited new teachers to take advantage of a state program that pays $650 per pupil in primary grades reduced to 20 students per teacher. The program, which applies to kindergarten through third grades, is designed to reverse sliding reading and math scores statewide.

The statewide movement to cut class sizes has prompted Orange County schools to seek a total of about 1,000 teachers by February. Statewide, only 5,000 new teachers received full accreditation last year.

The baby boom took flight shortly after the end of World War II and peaked in the early 1960s. School districts were building schools at remarkable rates to keep up with the population explosion. In Garden Grove, for instance, six schools opened in 1962.

By the 1970s and ‘80s, student enrollments had dipped. But since the early ‘90s they have surged again, prompting some districts to build or expand schools and others to switch to year-round schedules or other means to address rising overcrowding.

At the same time, retirements are expected to grow as teachers hired during the baby boom leave the classroom. Teachers in California become eligible for retirement at age 60.

U.S. Department of Education officials project that 30% of the nation’s 2.5 million teachers will retire over the next 10 years.

The state Department of Education does not forecast teacher retirements, but past reports show an increase. From 1992 to 1995, the number of California teachers who retired jumped from about 6,900 to 7,140.

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Orange County does not tabulate retirement figures either, but Mike Kilbourn, the county Department of Education’s legislative liaison, estimates that the annual rate has been about 500 teachers per year, though it is beginning to increase. Early retirement plans offered by districts seeking to save money in the 1980s contributed to the exodus, but Kilbourn said departures in recent years have been attributable to the aging of the teacher force.

Districts that boomed in the ‘50s and ‘60s are seeing even greater retirement upswings.

For example, Garden Grove Unified lost 45 administrators and teachers in 1994. Two years later, the number jumped to 75. A total of 40 teachers retired from Orange Unified this year. That’s up by almost a dozen from last year, officials said.

The trend leaves these school districts bracing to lose some of their best talent in the next three to five years.

“Older school districts like ours were products of the baby boom,” said Garden Grove Unified spokesman Alan Trudell. “The postwar growth attracted many people to California and the teaching profession. As a result, many of them are nearing the retirement age.”

Said Malcolm Seheult, an Orange Unified assistant superintendent: “There’s increased awareness, anxiety and sensitivity to the retirement issue. We have more senior teachers because this is a stable community. People stay in Orange.”

“Teacher retirement has been a concern for us,” said William Nunan, Newport-Mesa Unified’s director of human resources. “We do have more senior teachers in our district. The most we can do each year is make the best guesstimate.”

Nearly 19% of Newport-Mesa Unified’s teachers were hired during the late 1960s, Nunan said. About five years ago, he added, this district’s teachers had an average of 24 years of experience. That average has fallen to 18 years as younger teachers are being hired to keep up with the district’s student growth.

“It’s very hard to predict teacher retirements,” Nunan said. “When they elect to retire is a very personal decision for them.”

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Virtually all of the county’s districts this year have reduced class sizes in the first grade, and most of these districts expect to expand the program to additional grade levels next year, perhaps doubling the need for teachers.

As long as the state continues to offer this funding program, educators predict that they will continue to actively recruit teachers over the next five years before their class-reduction plans are fully in place.

“Some of the districts are really going to be stretched,” Kilbourn said.

Although school districts can create extra teaching positions for growth, they generally cannot post additional jobs for retirement projections.

“It’s too risky,” said Newport-Mesa’s Nunan. “We can guess that a person reaching 27 to 29 years with the district will retire. But every year I’m still amazed. There are times when those who I think will retire end up staying on past their 60s. And those who I don’t expect will retire do.”

The loss of veteran teachers will be felt in other ways.

As new teachers enter school districts this year to help reduce class sizes, seasoned teachers are most vital to mentoring and strengthening the new recruits, Nunan said.

Many school districts are expanding staff development programs that pair master teachers with new instructors.

“We need to bridge the instructional and experience gap even more now,” Nunan said, “because when a veteran teacher leaves, we lose so much of their expertise.”

One way to cushion the blow is to lure retired teachers back into the classroom. Legislation that would offer retired teachers broader pay incentives to return to teaching is currently on Gov. Pete Wilson’s desk. A spokesman noted that the bill received little opposition. Wilson is expected to make a decision on it by the end of the month.

Retired teacher Clunk finds reason for optimism in this hurly-burly time for educators. Notwithstanding the potential large-scale departure of older teachers such as herself, she said, schools benefit from fresh energy and creativity brought by new instructors hired to reduce class sizes.

This year’s new teachers have been making do with limited space by squeezing into unconventional classroom settings. Some are sharing rooms, conducting classes on amphitheater stages, in teachers’ lounges, libraries and cafeterias.

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The scenarios are reminiscent of Clunk’s first years of teaching.

“Young people are resilient,” Clunk said at her Fountain Valley home, where she spends time gardening, decorating and volunteering at a local arts center. “I remember when I first started teaching, we had double sessions and there was overlap of about 1 1/2 hours with my morning class and the afternoon class.”

“When the afternoon class came, I had to take the kids to a multipurpose room to watch a film or read to them outside.”

Clunk said she supports the class-reduction program, though she regrets never having the luxury of fewer than 28 students in a classroom throughout her 38 years in education.

“One year, I had 43 students,” she recalled, leafing through her scrapbook. “Kids were just pouring all over the place and schools were being built like mad.”

Teachers recruited during Clunk’s time were given more time and incentives to prepare for their classrooms, she said.

Clunk was hired about four months before she started teaching; during this year’s rush to reduce class sizes, school districts had from three months to as little as three weeks to recruit as many as three times the teachers they usually hire.

And a number of federal programs that encouraged people to go into teaching in the 1950s and ‘60s were axed during the Reagan administration’s drive to save money by reducing the size of the federal government, experts said.

“There were huge federal investments in preparing teachers, such as the Urban Teacher Corps, a two-year training, on-the-job internship,” said Linda Darling-Hammond of Columbia University’s School of Education and the director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

Those were the old days, Clunk concedes. She described the post-war growth as a time of high promise. Schools now, however, face overcrowding, the complexities of a more diverse student population and low financial resources.

“I was fortunate to be a teacher then,” Clunk said. “Things have changed and it’s not easy to be a teacher now.”

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School’s Out

In just three of Orange County’s 24 elementary school districts, retirement will create 143 openings this year. Here’s how many teachers and administrators have left three of the hardest-hit districts in the last three years:

Newport-Mesa Unified

1993-94: 17

1994-95: 28

1995-96: 28

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Orange Unified

1993-94: 25

1994-95: 28

1995-96: 40

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Garden Grove Unified

1993-94: 45

1994-95: 72

1995-96: 75

Source: Individual school districts; Researched by TINA NGUYEN/Los Angeles Times