re: LA Legislature to address Teacher Shortage using Retirees earning 50%.

The teacher shortage is less about pay and more about bureaucratic bs that teachers have to deal with in order to teach. Teaching children is already not an easy job, but all of the extra stuff they’re tasked with is such a pain that turnover is a big problem. The longer tenured teachers tough it out to retirement, but the younger ones get burnt out quickly and often leave.

Where pay is a problem is in shortages for specific kinds of teachers. The shortage is far more dire for hs math and science teachers than it is for elementary education, ela, or for history teachers. One reason is that they cannot offer to pay more for one type of hs teacher than another despite there being a substantial gap in the number of qualified interested persons to teach those subjects. It’s a lot more difficult to get certified as an AP level physics or chemistry teacher than it is to teach English or social studies, but they’re paid the same. Thus, there’s a perpetual shortage of those teachers with more specialized qualifications.