ICSD: If our teachers are leaving, where does that leave us?

For years, ICSD has been shedding teachers in droves. As these teachers depart, our district has opted for a rotating door policy of hiring inexperienced teachers whom they can pay less over retaining certified, experienced, long-term teachers. Research conducted by the local teachers’ union, ITA (Ithaca Teachers’ Association) and presented at the January 3rd Board of Education (BoE) meeting, as well as interviews by The Tattler Editorial Board present a startling retention issue within ICSD. As students of this district, we are calling for the BoE to stop sacrificing the quality of our education for short-term cost cutting.

According to the ITA presentation, 4.3 percent of ICSD teacher positions in December 2022 were left unfilled, far outstripping Syracuse, Groton, Lansing, Dryden, and Rochester, with an average of 2.14 percent of positions going unfilled. At least one building in ICSD has a 50 percent turnover rate. 27 teachers have left district wide just since this school year began. More than 30 uncertified teachers are filling positions in the district—these are teachers without the proper credentials and training to be in the roles they occupy. Behind these statistics is a simple fact: ICSD teachers are leaving faster than the district can replace them. ICSD students need our district to create an action plan aimed at keeping our teachers here so that we can have access to the high-quality education we deserve. ICSD is in the throes of a retention crisis, and it must act with urgency.

Instead of addressing retention properly, the ICSD administration has tried to shift the blame with illogical excuses—one member of the Board of Education went so far as to suggest that the cold winter weather in Ithaca was partially to blame for our district’s poor teacher retention (although he didn’t explain why the weather didn’t affect Lansing, Dryden or Syracuse’s retention). Not only are some excuses illogical, others simply blame retention issues on the teachers themselves, questioning their willingness to support the progressive vision of the district. In response to the presentation done by the ITA, Director of Human Resources Robert Van Keuren stated, “​​We don’t hide who we are. Some people get here, in whatever job, administration, teacher, bus drivers. They think they can be a teacher here like they can be anywhere else. […] Those folks are not going to be allowed to do that here.”

If the district is asking teachers to go above and beyond for their vision, ICSD needs to provide three things, pay, proper communication and aid when understaffing or else ICSD will find itself digging a far deeper hole.

Certainly the most impactful reason for teacher departure is the lack of pay. Our teachers are being paid significantly less than teachers in neighboring, comparable districts. In response, HR Assistant Director, Gladira Velasquez Simms, emphasizes that the district receives over 75 percent of its budget from tax-payers, as they receive less federal and state funding than neighboring districts. To find the money to increase salaries to compare with our neighboring districts, ICSD would need to rely on increasing local taxes, an unwelcome action in a city notorious for its high taxes. But if nothing is done, ITA President, Adam Piasecki, believes the staffing shortage will get far worse, and “it’s only going to increase as people find out that there are vacancies in places where they can get up to 10,000 dollars more.” 86.4 percent of the 151 teachers surveyed by the ITA said that more financial security and higher pay is one of the most important things the district can do to support them.

One group of employees in ICSD seem to have exponentially growing salaries: administrators. There is a much greater gap between administrator and educator salaries than in any other comparable district. Piasecki explained that cutting recently added administrator positions won’t necessarily lead to making up the millions of dollars needed for raising teacher salaries but, “Could that few hundred thousand dollars be seen as money given to the teacher unit, or ESP [Educational Support Professionals] unit or other service staff unit? Absolutely!” According to the New York 2019-20 School Year Financial Transparency Report, IHS spends 6.5 percent more per pupil on administration than our neighboring district, Lansing Central School District, and 2.2 percent less than Lansing per pupil on teacher salaries and benefits.

The last teacher contract was negotiated in 2019, and will be in place until 2025. However, the percent raises that the contract guarantees teachers have been nearly doubled by inflation rates in the past two years, so their quality of life is actually worse than it was before the raises, since salaries have not been adjusted to account for inflation at all. The district, in a statement to the Tattler Editorial Board in response to allegations of teachers’ low pay, argued that unions were in charge of contract negotiation, “it is our understanding that each of the agreements [pay contracts] passed by healthy margins of ‘yes’ votes.” However, this fails to address the fact that the last contract was negotiated in 2019, pre-pandemic and pre-inflation. The simple truth is that our teachers, though they may have approved the small raises given to them as their best option, are hardly paid close to a comparable salary to nearby districts.

Teachers aren’t simply leaving the district for higher salaries though. Piasecki is aware of a number of teachers who’ve left the district to make very similar salaries to those at ICSD. Instead, many ICSD teachers are dealing with—and leaving because of—uniquely high burnout rates. Christopher Carver, an AP Human Geography and Economics teacher at IHS, told the Tattler Editorial Board, “There is no doubt that there are significant headwinds to teaching in this district right now … morale is quite poor.”

Arti Jewett, the Science Department head at IHS and the AP Biology teacher, cites increased poor student behavior and lack of support from administration when dealing with such behavior as a primary reason for burnout. Jewett explains that issues of school violence, poor student mental health, and trouble with drugs such as marijuana have increased. Student behavioral issues are often met with failure by the district to properly communicate with teachers on how best to deal with students misbehaving. According to Carver, “there is almost no support from administrators.” in terms of attendance. Jewett would like to see more guidance from the administration on what the procedure is for certain behaviors, such as coming to class high. When teachers do reach out to administrators for help with specific cases, there is little to no follow-up communication. Jewett added, “We don’t need to know details but we do need to know what the resolution is.”

Communication, an issue that 65.6 percent of teachers brought up in the ITA survey as a primary drain in their position, remains a district-wide issue. Carver explained, “I couldn’t imagine communication that is less poor.” He brought up a recent administrative decision of instituting 45s as the minimum grade that was made before getting feedback from the whole teaching staff, which he said is among a longstanding pattern of impactful decisions being made without proper educator input or consent. Jewett added that she understands that sometimes it’s trial and error in terms of implementing new policies but believes that a cost-benefit analysis is often neglected and that “more of a deliberative process would be a good thing.”

There are many solutions that need to be implemented when handling a problem at this scale and we expect the district to look at every side of this problem. One solution we know will be effective will be at exceeding, or at least matching, teacher salaries of neighboring districts. A teacher working multiple jobs—as a number of teachers in ICSD are—because they can’t support themselves on an ICSD salary will not be able to teach to the best of their abilities. Teachers who leave mid-way through the year to seek pay and conditions are also hurting students. Every day that the district does not respond with urgency and effective solutions, our education suffers.

Moreover, when implementing policies such as new grading systems and new schedules, talking to teachers and actually including that feedback in policy implementation is vital. Teachers will not stay in this district if they don’t feel heard. With burnout as a huge issue, ICSD cannot simply write it off as a “nationwide issue.” Instead, our district needs to respond with concrete burnout plans. District and school administrators need to provide increased support and guidelines to teachers dealing with poor student behavior. Additionally, the district should also consider hiring staff who are specifically trained to help with student behavior in ways that are fair to both the student and the teacher.

Teachers leaving is an exponentially worsening cycle: As more teachers depart from the district, they will be followed by an even larger number of teachers who cannot keep up with woefully understaffed departments. This is clearly already occurring in ICSD: 66.2 percent of teachers said that understaffing was a strain on their jobs according to the ITA survey.

Now in her 8th year of teaching at IHS, Jewett said, “We go into this profession because we value education, and we believe our students deserve the same array of opportunities as students in other New York schools. It is sad and frustrating when we cannot help students get the educational opportunities that they want.”

Our administrators and the BoE are aware of this problem. Are they choosing to ignore it to save money? Not reacting properly to our teachers’ needs undermines the quality of our education as ICSD students. We do acknowledge that there is no easy solution to this. But this issue has reached a crisis point. If the district is not doing everything in its power to raise teacher salaries and listen to them when they say they need support and a voice, every administrator whose job it is to support the educational pursuits of this district is at fault for lowering the standard of our learning.