IL has a teacher shortage problem – SPEDxchange has a solution

A recent survey from the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools shows widespread teacher shortages – a problem SPEDxchange, a company focused on connecting schools with Special Education educators, hopes to solve with a free program for rural, low-income school and smaller school districts.

“School districts were facing a shortage crisis before the pandemic and now the problem is even worse,” said John Consalvi, CEO of SPEDxchange. “We decided to offer schools the opportunity for free job postings on our platform to help with their recruiting efforts during these difficult times.”

SPEDxchange is offering schools district with 10,000 or less students free Special Education teacher job postings for the next six months. The company’s platform reaches thousands of Special Education university students across the country. Of the 591 of the state’s 853 districts surveyed in the IARSS survey, 77 percent said they have a teacher shortage problem. Special education was of particular concern as 195 positions were either vacant or filled by an unqualified teacher.

“Our platform is a way of connecting school districts with well-qualified candidates for Special Education jobs,” Consalvi said. “We want to help smaller school districts level the playing field by being able to connect them with qualified candidates. Hiring unqualified special education teachers or leaving these positions unfilled puts special education students at an even greater disadvantage. We want to help these districts find qualified teacher to better serve the students in their care.”

Consalvi also noted that the federal loan forgiveness program allows teachers to shave off $17,500 of student debt if they teach in a rural or low-income school district for five years.

“The districts that need the most help in attracting qualified special education teachers are the very ones the federal government has targeted for student loan forgiveness,” Consalvi said. “We want to help these districts use all of the tools at their disposal to hire and retain well-qualified students.

To learn more about the teacher shortage study, log onto: https://iarss.org/2020-educator-shortage/. To learn more about the free jobs postings program from SPEDxchange, log onto: https://www.spedxchange.com/.