Quincy Reporter

State Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) is sounding the alarm about a new Illinois Association of Superintendents of Schools survey that finds roughly to 90% of the state's school districts are facing a teacher shortage.

Tracy recently raised the issue in her Senate Week in Review for Jan. 17-21.

When it comes to the state’s teacher shortage, researchers found the problem is only getting worse in the age of the COVID-19 crisis. Overall, Illinois is reporting a shortage for a fifth straight year and some district officials predict the shortage will grow over the next two academic years.

ABC7 Eyewitness News reports there are now more than 2,000 open positions across the state. At the state’s largest district, Chicago Public School officials have taken to paying substitutes in hopes of filling openings.

The Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools (IARSS) recently released its 2021 Illinois Educator Shortage Study, detailing that 17% of all teacher openings across all districts went unfilled last year and 88 percent of all districts admit problems with teacher shortages. 

“For several years, we have partnered with Goshen Education Consulting and higher education experts to survey schools across the state about the shortage of educators and to report our findings,” IARSS officials said. “This year, we have enhanced and expanded our report.

According to Chalkbeat Chicago, superintendents in 660 school districts out of the state’s 852 districts responded to this year’s survey, with researchers finding that “more than 2,000 positions were either unfilled or filled by someone who was not qualified to teach when the survey was conducted.” Researchers added that more than 400 classes in 19% of districts were canceled and 380 classes in 15% of districts had to go online because schools had no one available for in-person teaching.

With the state having recently received over $7 billion in federal COVID relief funding to help safeguard the system, IARSS President Mark Klaisner warns money alone probably won’t get the job done.

“COVID has made it so difficult that money is not the issue or the discussion,” he said. “It’s much more about trying to find quality people to provide a worthwhile education for kids.”

Tracy has also recently promoted the Voter Empowerment Project now being pushed by Republican lawmakers.

“Senate Republican lawmakers are working to put citizens back in the driver’s seat of their democracy through the Voter Empowerment Project," she posted to Facebook. She described the measure as "a series of constitutional amendments to fix the state’s broken redistricting system, and allow voters to weigh in on new laws, throw out corrupt politicians, and make substantive changes to the Illinois Constitution through popular referendums,”