According to a new study released by the Calder Policymakers Council, Washington state is seeing historically high rates of teachers leaving the classroom and high turnover rates.
“What we are dealing with in the classroom is difficult and it’s difficult on multiple levels,” said Jamillah Bomani, a fourth grade teacher in Seattle Public Schools. She said it’s no surprise that the study found teachers are leaving the classroom in droves.
“There’s a lot going on with expectations from the district and from families, and what you want for students and what they also need socially and emotionally,” Bomani said.
The study found that there was a 1.6% increase in the amount of teachers in the state that left their jobs between 2021 and 2022.
That means districts would have needed to hire more than 1,000 teachers for the current school year than the previous year to make up for the loss.
“At this point it’s to be expected,” said Bomani. “There’s nothing very surprising about any of those things. We see them in our schools on a regular basis.” The study also found that teachers with less than ten years of experience in the classroom were the driving force behind the high turnover rate.
“You might be a new teacher thinking this is going to be great, and you hop in and realize when you get in what all it entails and how much of a strain it’s going to be on you,” Bomani said.
When it comes to teacher retention, Bomani said two things keep coming up — teacher pay and class size.
“Can I afford to live in Seattle as a SPS teacher, can I buy a house and establish myself in Seattle as a SPS teacher? Mostly no,” Bomani said. “We’ve had teachers leave mid-year, first or second year and it was just too much. And they said, ‘You know what, I can be doing something else that is less stressful.’”