It’s not just COVID-19: Why Texas faces a teacher shortage

Gordon Mock, outside of Thompson Elementary School in Houston on Tuesday, says he thought teaching would be his dream job. But he quit the profession in 2018 because of big class sizes, high insurance costs and a lack of support. (Credit: Justin Rex for The Texas Tribune)

Over the last two years, Texas’ public education system has been through the wringer, from shifting to online classes and debates about making masks mandatory to the ongoing tensions over how race and sex should be taught in schools to, most recently, the renewed discussion over school safety in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Uvalde where 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed.

Teachers have been at the front lines of all of these issues — and it’s taken a toll on them. Texas has long had a teacher shortage, but the consensus is that the pandemic has made it worse, pushing teachers to their limits and out of the job.