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BCPS hoping to fill positions; educators bracing for shortage

Baltimore City is trying to fill about 600 positions by the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Credit: US Dept. of Education/Flickr Creative Commons
Baltimore City is trying to fill about 600 positions by the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Credit: US Dept. of Education/Flickr Creative Commons

Baltimore’s public schools start the new year in just 25 days … and the system is still looking to hire hundreds of teachers for vacancies. How will classrooms be affected and what’s being done to get educators in place?

The schools’ chief of staff, Alison Perkins-Cohen, says the system has been recruiting energetically and still is. But, she warns Baltimore and Maryland are not alone in the teacher deficit:

“All of us need to be thinking nationally about how do we solve this problem and how do we make teaching more attractive to young people as such the important job that it is in terms of really shaping the future.”

Plus Baltimore Teachers Union officer Cristina Duncan Evans explains teachers are excited for the new school year but the effects of burnout are real.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'