While the average Hanover High teacher receives $52,000 per year, less affluent New Hampshire school districts often pay salaries of less than $32,000, a rate at which many schools around the state are having difficulty finding and retaining enough teachers to fill their classrooms.
Despite ranking as one of the top-ten per-capita wealthiest states, New Hampshire is currently suffering from one of the worst high school teacher shortages in the nation.
This year the New Hampshire Department of Education has put sixteen subjects -- including math, science, technology, special education, music and world languages -- on its annually published list of fields experiencing critical shortages of teachers. In these shortage areas the state allows potential teachers to obtain alternative methods of certification, which have more relaxed standards.
Some educators, including National Education Association of New Hampshire spokesperson Dennis Murphy, worry that relaxed certification means schools resort to a "warm body syndrome." Lower standards, they say, may result in lower quality education for students.
Meanwhile, school administrators like Lebanon School District Superintendent Michael Harris and Murphy both argue that relaxed certification is a positive first step in solving the teacher shortage crisis.
"Teacher certification is a real mess and it needs to changed. I wish we could hire people with less certification, such as Dartmouth students," Murphy said.
The current lack of teachers, which began to be a problem in the middle of the last decade according to several school administrators, appears to grow each year and has attracted attention from government officials outside the classroom.
"I think we're at an eight [on a scale of one to ten] and we're heading toward an even more difficult time ... this is becoming a crisis," Nicholas Donohue, the commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education, said during a New Hampshire Public Radio discussion.
Many in the education profession agree that the shortage is primarily due to the relatively low salaries offered to teachers in New Hampshire as compared to other states in New England.
The average New Hampshire teacher's salary last year was $37,734, compared to a national average of $42,722 and an average in New England of $46,722. Average salaries ranged from a high of $52,000 in Hanover to a low of $31,000 in towns such as Claremont and Newport.
Many teachers and administrators are dissatisfied with New Hampshire's lack of income from sales taxes and heavy reliance on local property tax, which Murphy calls "unfair." Residents of areas with lower property values pay less in taxes, but area school districts also have less money to spend on education.
"Current per pupil cost of education as computed by the state government is $4,200, but in reality the average per pupil cost is $7,500, and the difference is made up by local property taxes," Murphy said.
The call for tax reform is common among New Hampshire educators, who seek the stability of consistent aid from the state in order to improve the quality of education that they can provide.
"I personally am in favor of income tax, and most people in the education profession would agree with me ... there is growing support for change," Harris said.
Harris said the problems that plague the New Hampshire education system are caused by the disparity of wealth between distrticts.
"There are lots of teachers out there, it's just that the poor districts can't afford to hire them," Harris said, noting the case of the Claremont School District, which sued the state in 1997 after failing to pass state inspection and subsequently losing its accreditation.
The town of Claremont claimed that it could not afford to repair the school or improve education because state funding was not providing enough support. Due to the Claremont lawsuit, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered the state to "define and fund an adequate level of education."
Murphy said that since then, little has been done by the state to follow through on the Court's mandate. Claremont taxpayers "bit the bullet" and improved their high school without state support and regained accreditation, he added.
The teacher shortage in New Hampshire and across the nation is especially bad in the areas of math, science and special education.
"Special education teachers are in especially high demand and concurrently low supply, given the federal laws that mandate both mental and physical special education to any student with need," Harris said.
Several administrators noted that the lack of science and math teachers was due to the highly competitive labor market, in which college graduates could find better jobs in other areas outside teaching.
"Those who study math, world languages, science and computer technology have a lot of high-paying opportunities in related fields. Somehow, we need to make education more appealing to young adults choosing career directions. It would certainly be helpful if society in general valued and respected teachers more," Karen Erlandson, Principal of Pittsfield Middle and High School, said in an email.
Two full-time teaching positions remain vacant at Erlandson's school, despite the fact that classes begin in less than a month. Erlandson noted, however, that "strong support from a community that values education" -- Pittsfield recently approved $5.3 million in order to renovate the school -- has helped alleviate the shortage problem.
Other education professionals expressed similar sentiments. "Lebanon has high quality education because of the community support -- especially parent volunteering and help from local businesses. We don't have a problem with turnover, but we have a serious problem with an aging experienced staff," Mary Rutherford, office assistant at Lebanon High School, noted.
The issue of an aging population of baby-boomer educators who are about to retire is of major concern to schools.
"In the sixties, lots of students were enticed into education due to the National Defense Education Act, which forgave student loans and provided great encouragement to go into the field of teaching. Since then, the act is gone, and most of the grant programs have been replaced by loan programs. As a result, a young person out of college is faced with great debt and since teaching remains a low paying occupation, fewer students think about entering the profession," Harris commented.
In his own district, Harris said he faces the retirement of eight to ten teachers next year, which he called the "tip of an iceberg."
Another change that has fueled the shortage, Harris said, is the greatly changed role of women in the American economy.
"While thirty years ago (women) were limited to education or nursing, they now have many more career options and gender biases have been eliminated for the most part. Young women are reluctant to enter the [teaching] field when they can make so much money doing something else," Harris added.
Other educators have pointed to poor working conditions and lack of professional respect as reasons for the shortage. Nationwide, the turnover rate for new teachers is as high as thirty percent.
"In many schools, being a teacher is tough. You have to get permission to use the Xerox machine and pencils and papers are doled out as if they were special commodities," Murphy said. "We need to provide mentoring in order to prevent first-year teacher turnover."
While most school districts provide informal mentoring, several teachers and administrators noted that a state-wide institutionalized mentoring program would be better.
"We should be helping (new teachers) succeed. The 'sink or swim' approach is just not working. Ask experienced teachers about their first year of teaching and they will roll their eyes and tell you they don't know how they managed," Murphy concluded.
