A chronic shortage of special education teachers in Maryland schools is compounding the strain of shrunken budgets and forcing schools to stretch staff to meet the needs of some students.
In Montgomery County, about 18 special education positions remain unfilled. Prince George’s County is going without 30 teachers even after allotting about 100 fewer positions than originally proposed. Both districts have many more vacancies in speech and occupational therapy. Together, the districts have nearly 50,000 students with special needs.
For worried parents, one less teacher means one less person trained in handling the growing number of students with challenges detailed on special needs students’ Individualized Education Plans, from autism to emotional disorders to mental retardation.
“Parents are concerned about how the IEPs will be implemented without the people to do it,” said Mike McLaughlin, a parent in Prince George’s County who operates an e-mail list for families of special needs students.
And though both districts have made exceptions to current hiring freezes to bring in special education teachers, officials concede resumes aren’t pouring in. Available teachers are forced to instruct outside their areas of expertise, and mainstream classrooms that once had an extra teacher for special needs students are more likely to go without.
“Fewer people are going to have to do more work,” said Prince George’s Superintendent John E. Deasy, explaining that many teachers have needed to move from supporting positions to classroom positions.
Maryland has a more severe shortage than most states. In 2005, about 19 percent of special education classes were taught by teachers not certified in the field, compared with about 9 percent nationwide.
And although programs are in place to bring in more special-education teachers — including graduate school grants and various incentives for classroom assistants to become certified to teach — the trick is getting them to stay in the field.
“We’re finding that it’s not so much we don’t have teachers in Montgomery County certified in special education,” said school board member Sharon Cox, “but that they leave it and go into general education because of burdens in paperwork and different requirements, leading to less flexibility.”
