By Sara Ballenger

Members of the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Blue Ribbon Task Force came to Los Altos, Nov. 14, to hear suggestions from the public about solutions for the critical teacher shortage in the county.

The task force was formed as a way to identify and solve problems facing public education in Santa Clara County, according to the office of education.

According to the task force, there are 1,800 teacher vacancies in the county and over 30 percent of the county’s teachers are expected to leave their classrooms within the next five years.

The task force reported that the flux within the teaching community is due to a variety of factors, including retirement and moving to areas with a lower cost of living.

Santa Clara County Superintendent Colleen Wilcox highlighted another problem facing public education in the county.

“A crisis we are currently facing is the number of qualified teachers we have in our valley,” she said. “The student population is expected to increase and so is the need for experienced teachers.”

Wilcox added that 15 percent of the teachers in the county are not fully credentialed.

“The gap is going to worsen,” Wilcox said. “The number one reason is retirement. About 40 percent of current teachers in the county are in their 50s or 60s. In the next five years we will lose more than half of those teachers.”

How does a credentialed teacher really impact student learning?

Wilcox cited a study by Linda Daring-Hammond, of Stanford University, which states that in terms of gains in math achievement in grades 3-5, having an experienced and credentialed teacher influences student success by 43 percent.

Wilcox said over 90 percent of teachers at the top 10 percent of schools within the county are credentialed, as opposed to the 10 percent of lowest performing schools, where only 70 percent of teachers are credentialed.

The audience of community members, students, educators, and parents were asked by the task force to give verbal and or written “testimony” as to what they see as a solution to problems in public education within the county.

Gwen Quail, a longtime science teacher at Mission College, said there needs to be more respect for teachers and the teaching profession in order to hire and maintain quality teachers.

Another suggestion given is to pay teachers more.

Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District Superintendent Rich Fischer, brought up the point of the tight and expensive houseing market in Silicon Valley and the amount of testing a teacher administers.

“Housing is a huge issue,” he said. We need to have low market rate housing,” he said. “A teacher needs to be teaching and not always testing.”

Robert Freeman, who became a teacher as a second career, would also like to see the process of becoming credentialed easier for “second career” teachers and teachers in general, including the idea that the money spent on becoming credentialed can be tax deductible.

“I had to jump through extraordinary hoops to get my credentials,”Freeman said. “Teaching is way more rewarding that business, but it’s a lot harder to become a teacher.”

For more information on the next “Solutions Forum,” or to give feedback to the task force, logon to www.sccoe.org.