NH

State tackles shortage of special education teachers

By Rebecca Correa
Eagle-Tribune
Published: October 19, 2006

It's more than a month into the school year and school districts across the state are still looking for 32 special education teachers. But the state's involvement in a national recruitment campaign may offer some relief - to fill the vacancies and to make sure the trend doesn't continue.

Special education is near the top of the state Department of Education's annual critical shortage list - and it has been for more than 20 years.

The state is one of five chosen to work with the National Center for Special Education Personnel this year. Through the personnel center, the state has online advertisements for 20 of those 32 special education vacancies.

But the recruitment campaign goes beyond online recruitment. It also focuses on finding those who don't yet have a college degree. By distributing brochures and videos that target students as young as middle school, the personnel center is trying to bring more people into the field.

Targeting young students who are thinking about careers in special education is something that should have been done years ago, said Mary Lane of the state Bureau of Special Education.

Of the 776 educators who received a New Hampshire teaching certificate last year, only 130 were certified in special education, according to state records.

Judith Fillion, director of credentialing at the Department of Education, said those figures set the state up for a similar special education shortage next year.

She said the state needs to hire - or will be short - about 157 additional special education teachers by the start of the next school year.

While Lane is optimistic the national recruitment program will work, local administrators said they will come up with creative ways to fill the shortage if it doesn't.

In the Salem School District, Superintendent Michael Delahanty said he was able to fill two special education teaching vacancies by the end of the summer by encouraging two candidates to enroll in an alternative program.

Fillion said the alternative program is the other statewide initiative developed to fill shortages. It allows educators with teaching certificates to continue to work in the classroom while they get a special education certificate.

When alternative programs aren't an option, a district might end up hiring two less-qualified educators instead of one.

Superintendent Douglas MacDonald said when the Timberlane Regional School District couldn't find a second speech pathologist this year, "we made some adjustments and came up with an alternative plan."

The district hired two speech language assistants, who don't have master's degrees, but together can do the work of one speech pathologist.

Lane said solutions like these aren't ideal and shouldn't be common in 10 years.

Part of the recruitment campaign encourages the state to form a panel of businesspeople, parents and teachers, who will form a long-term strategic plan for the state's special education shortage. Lane said the panel has begun to meet.