{"id":32879,"date":"2023-07-13T18:49:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-14T00:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/teacher-shortage-affecting-rural-america-hits-close-to-home\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:04:11","slug":"teacher-shortage-affecting-rural-america-hits-close-to-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/teacher-shortage-affecting-rural-america-hits-close-to-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Teacher shortage affecting rural America hits close to home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rural
Rural school districts face a teacher shortage crisis, with open positions across local school districts. (Unsplash)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Teacher shortages in rural communities are hitting close to home as districts in Southwest Colorado struggle to fill teaching positions the month before school is back in session.<\/p>\n

Reece Blincoe, superintendent of Dolores School District RE-4A, is looking for a fourth-grade teacher, secondary math teacher and secondary English teacher. The district has filled a kindergarten position with a teacher\u2019s aide who is pursuing a certification.<\/p>\n

\"Reece
Reece Blincoe<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re just going out on a limb just so we can have somebody in that classroom as a teacher,\u201d Blincoe said.<\/p>\n

Blincoe spoke of a startling decline in the number of applications coming into the school for open positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cElementary applications used to be a dime a dozen,\u201d he said. \u201cWe used to get 20 or 30 every time we had an elementary opening. And now, we have a good job, and we can\u2019t even get an application.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mancos Superintendent Todd Cordrey echoed Blincoe\u2019s comments, noting that they are looking for two counselors, a social worker, a special-education teacher and three para-professionals before school starts in August.<\/p>\n

Cordrey said starting the school year without filling the positions would be a \u201cvery bad situation,\u201d and spoke to the kind of culture professionals would join if they worked in Mancos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis place is a great place for people to work. We have a really strong culture of support and supportive students, and it makes for a great environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If teacher positions aren\u2019t filled by the start of school, substitute teachers will be slotted into those positions. Blincoe and Cordrey also said they can hire individuals with a bachelor\u2019s degree to fulfill a teaching position, even if it isn\u2019t a teaching degree, and put them through a program that gives them their teaching certification in the first year while they teach.<\/p>\n

As far as counseling staff goes, Cordrey said, \u201cOur administrative team would have to absorb the responsibility of the counseling staff if we\u2019re not able to fill those positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would love to see people apply, and we\u2019d love to do what we can to get them in and start them on a career that they could have for 20 or 30 years, a career that\u2019s really meaningful. A career that changes lives,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n

\"Todd
Todd Cordrey<\/span>Todd Cordrey<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Blincoe and Cordrey both spoke of low teacher pay and high cost of living as a reason teachers may be deterred from moving into the area. Mancos, Dolores and Cortez have all increased teacher salaries this year, but they hope to keep raising that number.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our school districts have been trying to substantially raise teacher\u2019s pay, and we\u2019ve all been successful in doing that, and we\u2019re working toward continuing to do that,\u201d Blincoe said.<\/p>\n

Colorado Succeeds reports<\/a> that 77% of Colorado\u2019s 196 districts are rural, and \u201cthey face daunting challenges recruiting teachers.\u201d According to their data, the average teacher salary in rural Colorado ranges from $25,000 to $35,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dolores, Mancos and Cortez\u2019s salaries are higher than the rural average, however.<\/p>\n

More that 90% of Colorado school district salaries are lower than the cost of living in Colorado, according to Colorado Succeeds, leading local districts to begin talking about building low-income housing to help take some financial burden off teachers.<\/p>\n

The problem with teacher shortages nationwide increased substantially after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the hardest-hit areas are Western states, rural and urban areas and high-poverty areas, according to the Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n

Elementary, art and special-education teachers are among the most difficult<\/a> to find.<\/p>\n

A 2019 study<\/a> by Rural School and Community Trust found that about 9.3 million public school students across the United States attend rural schools, yet these schools struggle the most to find staff.<\/p>\n

The superintendents also said teachers lack public support, which GAO summed up as a \u201cnegative perception of the teaching profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blincoe said it only takes one or two negative and hypercritical parents to make a teacher wonder, \u201cIs this worth it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado Succeeds reported that Colorado loses 16% (1 in 6) teachers within their first five years of teaching.<\/p>\n

Superintendents Ty Gray in Dove Creek and Chris DeKay from Ignacio also expressed concerns over open positions in an email exchange with Blincoe, Cordrey and Montezuma-Cortez Superintendent Tom Burris.<\/p>\n

\"Rural
Rural school districts face a teacher shortage crisis, with open positions across local school districts. (Unsplash)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Montezuma-Cortez has more than 15 open positions for teachers in their schools, not including coaches. Burris mentioned in an email to Blincoe and other superintendents in the area that they are looking desperately for an assistant principal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get people back to where they want to be teachers,\u201d Blincoe said. \u201cThis is a huge problem, and it\u2019s a problem that\u2019s going to keep getting worse if we don\u2019t start addressing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

districts in Southwest Colorado are experiencing the effects<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[103,155,28,392,216,29,762],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores-schools-re-4a","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-school-district-re-6","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter","tag-teachers"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81958,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32879\/revisions\/81958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32879"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}