UNK faculty partner with ESU 10 to tackle teacher shortage

Unprecedented.

That’s the word Janet Eckerson uses to describe the current K-12 teacher shortage in Nebraska.

According to the Nebraska Department of Education’s annual Teacher Vacancy Survey, more than 900 positions across the state were either vacant or filled by personnel who weren’t fully qualified last fall. And that survey only included 310 of the state’s 436 school districts/systems.

“Literally every type of teaching certification is now considered a shortage area in the state of Nebraska, all fields, and we don’t anticipate this problem going away anytime soon,” said Eckerson, an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. “It’s not a demographic blip. This is a problem that we’re going to continue to face for years down the road.”

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