Trending
LEWISTOWN -- Just as the Friday night lights of another high school football season were about to go up in Mifflin County, there was one more spotlight from an appearance on another national news broadcast.
After being interviewed by MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Aug. 14, Mifflin County School District Superintendent of Schools Vance Varner, staff and students appeared on a segment that aired on NBC Nightly News Friday about the country's "Critical Teacher Shortage."
Varner walked the halls of Mifflin County High School as he spoke with NBC Senior White House Correspondent Shannon Pettypiece. Teacher Catie Breneman and husband Neil, who coaches the Husky cross country team; band director Art Belfiore; and several students also were included in the three-minute segment.
Varner was a national advocate for schools and teachers everywhere.
Across the country, students are heading back to school, but will there be enough teachers in the classrooms? NBC Nightly News came to Mifflin County to see first-hand the last-minute scramble of districts nation-wide.
The segment opens in school band room where Belfiore is directing a rehearsal with members of the Husky Marching Band. "It's back to school time in Mifflin County, the one thing that will be missing from some classrooms is fully certified teachers," Pettypiece said as the narrator for the interview.
She is then shown walking down a hallway with Varner. She continued, "Mifflin County Superintendent of Schools Vance Varner has spent the final days of summer scrambling to find staff."
Pettypiece doesn't waste a second diving into the difficult questions, asking Varner if it's ever been this hard to find teachers.
The superintendent doesn't mince works, "No, I'm very scared, I'm worried. This is a real emergency in public education. I think everyone needs to pay attention. It's going to take more than just the educational system to fix this."
To start the school year, Varner has hired nine non-professional teachers with no classroom experience. A high school English teacher job remains vacant.
Across the country, teacher and other staff shortages fueled by the pandemic are showing no signs of easing. There were 309,000 education jobs open as of June 2023, up 38 percent from this time in 2019.
Students say they're feeling the effects of a trend that's been building. That included those in Mifflin County.
"I think it'd be pretty rare not to have four or five substitute teachers a week," Mifflin County High School junior Styers Oden said.
"At one point, a teacher quit at the beginning of the year, and we were like switching substitutes every day," added Audrey Adams, a Mifflin County sophomore.
Pettypiece also spoke with the Brenemans, who have seen the staffing shortages firsthand. The couple are shown sitting at a table playing games with their seventh- and ninth-grade children.
Neil will be driving a school bus that transports the cross country teams to meets for a second year due to a shortage of bus drivers.
Standing outside a bus, Neil was asked if it was intimidating getting in that seat behind the wheel for the first time. "It is, it is," he replied. "Because it's larger than my little Honda Civic."
Catie, a reading teacher, has had to juggle her job, while also filling in for vacancies at her elementary school. She said she's seen growing burnout among her colleagues.
"There's a lack of respect for teachers and that is very frustrating, especially when you're dealing with a parent and a child that is disrespectful," Catie said. "That is very hard on teachers."
As a parent, she worries about what it means for her own kids.
"I just always kind of hope and pray that it's going to be somebody that's good in the classroom and treats my kids with kindness," Catie added.
To which Pettypiece replied, "You have to hope and pray for that, you don't feel confident?"
"I don't," Catie said. "I don't always know whose coming in."
An uncertainty that Catie and other parents will be facing for yet another school year.
As a side note, Varner said NBC News allowed students from the student newspaper, "The Tyrian" to shadow the project, talking with the crew and learning about their careers, tasks and memorable interviews.
The entire NBC News production crew was here for one day, doing the filming, interviewing, etc.
A video production staff came the day before to scout the area and run some drone footage.