By Philip Haldiman, Independent Newsmedia

Arizona teacher recruitment, retention and pay are at crisis levels, according to a new study from Arizona State University.

In the Peoria Unified School District, it is not as critical as some public school districts, but the need remains great.

When adjusted for cost-of-living, Arizona elementary school teacher pay is the lowest in the nation, and high school teacher pay ranks 48th, according to the study.

The study also said about 42 percent of Arizona teachers hired in 2013 left the profession within three years and 74 percent of Arizona school administrators surveyed said their campuses are experiencing a shortage of teachers.

Such is the case  in Peoria.

Spokeswoman Erin Dunsey said Peoria Unified has close to 2,000 teachers and 121 teacher openings. The district is 99 percent staffed for the 2016-17 school year, and based on current openings for the 2017-18 school year, the district is 94 percent staffed for next year.

Ms. Dunsey said every child deserves to have a high quality teacher in their classroom.

“The need is great, but we are committed to doing all that it takes to fill the need,” she said. “We have a lot of work to continue to do now and into the summer to get those positions filled before the start of the next school year.”

The district is using a number of recruitment strategies to attract and retain the best possible teachers for their classrooms, Ms Dunsey said.

One thing the district has done to fill the gap is to ramp up an employee incentive program for referring teachers to the district for a stipend.

“Our Human Resources Department continues to attend job fairs, host job fairs and works with universities throughout the state on behalf of hiring student teachers,” she said. “In addition, we work with ESI to bring more qualified teachers to the hiring pool.”

Teachers are leaving the profession for many reasons — retirement, disillusionment, low pay and a feeling of lack of support. Nearly 80 percent of urban school district administrators said hiring teachers is somewhat or extremely difficult, according to the study.

Dan Hunting, Morrison Institute senior policy analyst and principal researcher of the report, said district schools get about 48 percent of their revenue from local sources, primarily property taxes. About 38 percent comes from the state, which is mostly income and sales taxes, and 13 percent comes from federal sources.

Charter schools get the majority of their funding from the state because they can’t levy property taxes like district schools, so the state gives them more per student to make up the difference.

Mr. Hunting said teacher attraction and retention is a complex problem and there’s no simple solution.

“Pay is certainly an important factor, but it’s not the only factor,” he said. “Teachers feel that there’s an ever-increasing workload placed upon them. They also are not feeling valued by the community including parents and the politicians.”

There have been a lot of calls to reduce spending on administration and support services to pay teachers. However, this may have unintended consequences, Mr. Hunting said.

“It could increase teacher frustration and burnout, possibly offsetting any benefit from a modest pay raise,” he said. “Suppose we reduce the number of non-teaching positions at a school by eliminating the librarian and the assistant principal who tracks attendance. Someone is still going to have to put books on the shelves in the library, fill out the attendance forms, stand bus duty, etc. Those duties will likely fall to the teachers which increases their workload, taking away from the time they need to prepare lessons, grade papers and other duties.”

More than one-third of Arizona’s teachers have four years or less experience in the classroom, the report said.

Mr. Hunting said this has several effects ranging from children not getting experienced, veteran teachers to holding educational expenses down because so many people are at the bottom of the pay scale. This also means there is no zero-cost solution to the problem of teacher turnover, he said.

“Here’s why – Let’s say we want to keep teachers in the classroom but don’t want to raise their pay. So we come up with a no-cost program that causes teachers to stay on the job,” he said. “Now instead of a large percentage of teachers at the bottom of the pay scale, teachers will gain experience, and as they do so, they will move up the pay scale. You’d have a system full of teachers with five or 10 years’ experience rather than two or three years, and you’d have to pay them more even if you don’t grant overall salary increases.”