Carmen Gober never planned to homeschool. But during the last few days of this summer vacation, she was worried that her son, her AJ’s school, was severely understaffed.

Five-year-old AJ has cerebral palsy and cannot speak. His school in northwest Indiana serves students with emotional and developmental disabilities. Many of his classmates use wheelchairs.

“My biggest thing is safety,” Gober said. “If there was a fire in that building, how would you evacuate the children?”

Schools across the country are struggling to hire enough special education teachers and associate professionals. Shortages are so severe at AJ’s school that parents and educators say it’s dangerous. They attribute the problem to years of low wages and a reliance on inexperienced and unqualified staff.

AJ’s schools are operated by the Porter County Education Service, a system that administers special education services for seven school districts in the county. The agency employs special education teachers and is responsible for educating approximately 4,200 children with disabilities, according to the latest state data. That’s more students than most other Indiana school systems.

AJ attends a Special Education Learning Facility (SELF). This is a school for students in need of extensive support run by PCES.

When school started last month, Gober worried about empty seats and decided the family had no choice but to go homeschool with AJ. IEPs.

Gober’s mother quit her home health job to stay with AJ at school.

“I feel like the public education system is letting him down,” Gober said. “And it’s unfair.”

struggling to hire

Porter County administrators rushed to fill vacancies before the year began with SELF. , offered an additional fee of $3,000 to transition to SELF.

PCES Special Education Teachers Union President Daniel Zecevic said no teachers voluntarily transferred to SELF as a result. But she said she needed some to transfer.

And the entire PCES system, including neighboring schools, is understaffed.

“I think we’re barely together for the special education department,” Zecevich said last month.

It is not known exactly how many vacancies remain in SELF, as PCES Executive Director for Special Education Sandy Bodnar did not respond to specific questions from WFYI regarding vacancies. Instead, she wrote in her Sept. 6 email to WFYI that all positions are “currently covered” by licensed personnel.

However, these positions may be covered by substitute teachers, according to a PCES spokesperson. Teachers do not need to have special education training to be eligible for a substitute teaching license in Indiana. All they need is to be 18 years old and have a high diploma or equivalent.

At a Sept. 6 meeting, Bodnar told the school board that PCES had more than 20 vacancies.

The agency has 60 special education assistant professional vacancies, also known as teaching assistants, according to a spokesperson.

“Our goal has always been to provide our students with the most qualified staff available, and this sometimes means staff transfers,” Bodnar wrote. As we address teacher shortages, especially in special education, the Porter County Education Service continues to recruit and recruit.”

Low wages encourage vacancies

Superintendents from the seven participating districts form the PCES Board of Directors. At a meeting in early August, the board only briefly touched on staff shortages and a feverish effort to hire teachers for her SELF.

However, the teacher made a sharp criticism during the hearings that preceded the negotiation of the teacher’s contract.

“This building is not a safe building because we are not staffing enough,” union leader Zecevich told the board. “It’s amazing to me that there was no emergency in this building due to staff shortages. It’s only a matter of time.”

Zecevich, who has been teaching for more than 40 years, told the board that low wages are one of the main reasons the school system is losing teachers and struggling to recruit them.

She and others noted that some special education teachers are paid thousands of dollars less than other teachers with comparable experience in general education.

“You guys put us in this situation because we decided to be very frugal when it came to our salaries,” said Zecevich.

In Porter County, teachers who teach students with disabilities, including students from nearby schools, work at PCES. As a result, they have separate contracts with their general education teachers.

Porter County has several large, relatively affluent neighborhoods, such as Valparaiso and Duneland Schools, as well as rural areas such as East Porter County, Union Township, Porter Township, and Boone Township. Portage Township schools have the highest enrollment and highest concentration of low-income students of all participating school districts. In addition to providing special education services, PCES operates the Porter County Career and Technology Center, which offers vocational programs.

According to the latest state data, special education teachers in PCES average less than $45,000 a year, about $13,000 less than teachers in other Porter County schools. A teacher’s average salary is determined by several factors, including the staff’s educator experience. The PCES minimum salary is lower than some Porter County districts and higher than others.

Teachers’ unions and the school system are currently negotiating salaries for the current school year, and salaries may increase as a result.

As things stand, teachers say many special educators will get a significant pay rise by switching to general education jobs.

“It’s very shameful,” said Martin Aglan, a special education expert and professor emeritus at the University of Wyoming. “Working with students with severe disabilities requires extensive support. These are very, very demanding and very rewarding jobs.”

Agran said low wages mean schools rely on inexperienced educators.

“If anything, these are teachers who should be rewarded, not punished,” he said. “Given the challenges these students present, they should get the best teachers.”

Parents and educators say special education teacher assistants are also underpaid, despite the fact that they play an important role in the education of students with disabilities.

Gober, the mother of 5-year-old AJ, said her son’s classroom at SELF usually has three or four assistants (also called associate professionals) in addition to the teacher. This grade, she said she was told that his classroom had one teacher and one assistant. I write that I can’t. She said the number of associate professionals per classroom depends on the needs of the students in the room and hiring teaching assistants is a priority for PCES.

Gober said assigning one assistant to multiple children with disabilities wasn’t enough to give her son the one-on-one attention he needed.

“If you have one teacher, how can you meet their needs? [and] Historically, a classroom of 4-5 people [adults] There,” Gober said.

PCES last year raised the minimum wage for semi-professionals from $10 to $12 an hour. Bodnar said he believes this is a competitive hourly rate.

But in nearby Michigan City, special education teacher assistant recruitment is listed at $15.50 an hour. I am competing with my job.

Unqualified teachers, high workload

Porter County’s special education system has relied on unqualified special education teachers for years. Last year, PCES obtained 66 emergency permits for special education teachers. This is her second highest number in the state. These teachers did not have the necessary training or qualifications to be fully licensed.

Indiana banned the use of emergency permits for special education starting this year because the practice violates federal law. must have received

Teachers say low wages are paired with high loads because PCES has so many vacancies and untrained educators. Debbie Clifford, a special education teacher who works at Valparaiso High School, told the PCES Board that these issues are driving teacher and staff turnover.

“Every year we are asked to do more with less trained staff and no financial compensation,” says Clifford. Teachers are being allocated to handle more students and “these increasing case loads are making it difficult to provide our students with the quality services they need and deserve to succeed.”

Indiana does not have a minimum number of students for schools. State departments of education say it’s up to school districts to determine the number of adults they need. They say concerned parents of her SELF children can ask to be placed in another program.

That’s what Gober and her husband did. They want to put her AJ in a neighboring school and the staff shortage is not critical.

They kept AJ home from school while they waited for a response from the school system. But he struggled.

“He just needs to be around other kids,” Gober said. “He needs to run around, because he looks sad.”

So, a few weeks into the school year, they brought AJ back to SELF.

Gober is still worried.

Please contact WFYI Education Reporter Lee V. Gaines (lgaines@wfyi.org). Follow us on Twitter: @LeeVGaines.

Please contact WFYI Education Reporter Dylan Piers McCoy at dmccoy@wfyi.org. Follow us on Twitter: @dylanpmccoy.