Schools’ ‘Emergency’ Is Lack of Cheap Teachers

Re “What Does It Take to Get a Teaching Job?,” Aug. 19:

I just read Don Freeman’s letter about trying to get a teaching job and I can take it one step further. I have a valid life teaching credential and 15 years of experience teaching social science. I have a master’s degree. I have applied to numerous districts to get back into education and landed only one interview and no job.

I really believe there is age discrimination in hiring in the districts, and they do not want to hire people with a lot of experience because we are too expensive. School districts can keep moaning about not having enough qualified applicants as much as they want, but there are many like me who could add to the quality of education if those doing the hiring look beyond our graying hair and education.

Roy Rhino

Newport Beach

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Freeman’s lament is answered in his own letter: He has a master’s degree, and if the degree relates to the subject covered by his teaching credential, then he will continue to have a hard time finding a teaching job. School boards don’t want to hire the best teachers. They want to hire the cheapest teachers.

With a master’s degree, Freeman would have to be paid more than someone without that level of training and expertise.

Worse yet, school boards today strive to hire people without any credentials. People hired on deceptively named “emergency permits” can be paid even less than the regular starting salary for newly credentialed teachers and can be frozen at that low salary level for as long as five years or until they earn a credential. Few do because, for most, teaching is just a between-jobs fling. So kids are being taught by a revolving door of untrained, uninterested people. What a great future being created for our nation. The emergency permit is supposed to be just that: a mechanism for dealing with an unforeseen emergency that requires the hiring of teachers without credentials. Today, however, the “emergency” is a routine way for school boards to hire the cheapest teachers.

John Rossmann

Tustin