Approximately 25 Calhoun City High School math students will be bussed to Bruce and Vardaman to allow them to take advanced math courses.
The bus system is necessary because a math teacher wasn’t found for CCHS prior to the start of school.
“I interviewed six candidates over the summer. Four of them didn’t get their certification, and two took jobs at larger schools for more money,” Calhoun City High School Principal
Mike Ray
Mike Ray said. “We’ve been to recruiting fairs, done all we could do, and they just weren’t out there. We’re having to make arrangements in the district to get these students their math.”
There were considerations of allowing the ninth grade students to skip math at least until Christmas, while the school continued to search for a teacher, but parents weren’t pleased with that option.
“We heard from a lot of parents who were displeased with that, so we’re making the necessary adjustments in the district to insure all of these students are able to take a math course,” Ray said.
Perry Liles, who was scheduled to teach advanced math courses at Calhoun City, will instead teach algebra for the ninth grade students.
Students originally scheduled for Liles’ advanced courses will have the option to get on a bus and travel to Bruce and Vardaman to join classes there and then be bussed back to CCHS.
“We were fortunate that those classes were small enough to accommodate our students,” Ray said.
The bussing solution isn’t new to Calhoun. Students from all three campuses – Bruce, Calhoun City and Vardaman – are bussed every day to the Career and Technical Center on Madison Street in Calhoun City for classes there.
Certain classes have also been consolidated because of the difficulty in finding enough teachers for three different schools. This year chemistry is being offered at the Career Center, and the Spanish class is at Calhoun City High School. Art was moved from Bruce to Calhoun City several years ago to make it available to Calhoun City and Vardaman students.
“We may have to make some moves like that with upper level maths,” Superintendent Mike Moore said. “We’re already doing the bussing, so that part of it isn’t a big deal.”
Last year, the school district spent over $200,000 repairing the roof over half of the Career Center. If the other half of the roof can be repaired, Moore said that would create plenty of space to add a lot more classrooms to move more of the advanced courses there.
“We’re putting money back, and when we can we’ll do the other half of that (roof repair),” Moore said. “If the timber market comes back, we may look at selling some timber (off 16th section land) this year and seeing if we can do that.”
Mike Moore
Moore said he hasn’t received a lot of negative comments from the community about consolidating classes at the Career Center.
“One of the greatest pictures I see every year is Mrs. (Amanda) Gulledge’s art class, and there you see kids wearing jerseys and cheerleader uniforms from all three schools, and she has complete control,” Moore said. “I think we’re to the point now, especially with our upper level classes, that people see the need. Just like this math issue, we heard from parents, ‘I don’t care where you send them, just get them some math.’”
Finding qualified teachers in any of the state tested subjects of high school is becoming a significant challenge, Moore said.
“There are still hundreds of jobs open around the state, a lot of those in critical areas of math, science – tested areas,” Moore said. “I hope the state starts taking that into consideration.”
Moore said he believes teachers in state tested courses deserve more pay because of the added pressure and importance of the job.
“If we don’t do something statewide soon, we’re going to get in a real bind,” Moore said.
“If you’re a really good math or science student, you can probably go somewhere else (besides teaching) and make more than $32,000 a year. That’s really the bottom line.”
The teacher shortage is also impacted by a change in the endorsement model by the state. Most of Calhoun’s K-8th grade teachers have a K-8 endorsement, which means they can teach anything in those grades. But the state altered that last year to K-6th.
“Now to teach a math, science, English at the junior high level (7th-8th grades) you have to have a degree in that,” Moore said. “I’m not saying that’s bad. But it makes for a fewer number of available teachers.”
He emphasized the district was continuing its effort to find a math teacher for CCHS as soon as possible.
“We’re putting out an all out search to hopefully find someone that may have passed their test late or become available at Christmas,” Moore said.