From Spotlight PA Berks County
Spotlight PA Berks County will host a community forum entitled “Fixing Pennsylvania’s Teacher Shortage” on Thursday, Jan. 15, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., via Zoom.
Pennsylvania has a shortage of teachers. In Berks County, this shortage is particularly severe. When the 2025-26 school year began, Berks had a shortage of nearly 300 teachers. And this is a continuing trend: the number of teacher certificates issued in Berks County has dropped by 45% over the past decade, and 7.5% of our teachers left their positions in 2023. Diversity is also a challenge: only 3% of the Berks County teachers are people of color, compared to about a third of our students.
Teach Plus Pennsylvania has launched an initiative to address these challenges, PA Needs Teachers. In September, they released a series of reports outlining the policies needed to rebuild this vital pipeline.
Laura Boyce, the Executive Director of Teach Plus Pennsylvania, will share these strategies. She will be joined by Mary Franciscus, Human Resources Director at Berks County Intermediate Unit, and Rebecca West Burns, Dean of Education at Kutztown University, who will speak on the challenges and opportunities here in Berks County.
Register here for this community forum.