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Retirement lures teachers from classrooms
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FarkRAPID CITY -- As students start their summer vacations, many of their teachers are also bidding farewell to careers in education.
After 24 years as a computer and business teacher at Rapid City Christian High School, Shari Blackhurst is ready for the next phase of her life. Her husband, Dave, is also retiring from his job as a computer teacher for the Rapid City School District’s Jefferson Academy for the past 13 years.
Both in their 60s, the Blackhursts represent of a growing percentage of South Dakota’s education work force that is leaving the classroom as they become eligible for retirement.
South Dakota schools will lose at least 270 teachers to retirement this year. Almost 58 percent of those retirees are over 60. The average age of retiring teachers this year is 61, according to the South Dakota Department of Education.
With more than 12 percent of the state’s teachers age 60 and older, retirements have an impact on the state’s teacher work force, especially with fewer new teachers entering the profession or staying in South Dakota, according to secretary of education Rick Melmer. The number of active teachers in their first five years has declined 12 percent in the last five years, according to the education department.
At the same time, the state’s pool of teachers with more than 30 years of experience grew by 25 percent.
Dave Blackhurst is one of 29 teachers and administrators who is retiring from the Rapid City School District this year. The district has lost an average of 33 educators a year to retirements for the past four years.
This year, the district had 67 teachers resign, compared with 38 four years ago. But some of those resignations include teachers hired late last summer as temporary teachers. Temps automatically turn in a resignation at the end of the school year.
With more teachers eligible for retirement and fewer young people entering education, the state Board of Education is watching for shortages, Melmer said.
Melmer has been asked to report on teaching shortages at the board’s September meeting after schools have had the spring and summer to fill vacancies.
This year, the Rapid City district had 67 teachers resign, compared with 38 four years ago. Some of those resignations include teachers hired late last summer or during the year as temporary teachers. Temps automatically turn in a resignation at the end of the school year.
The district currently has 26 openings posted for teachers and is offering a signing bonus to recruit teachers to 11 of those positions, according to the district Web site.
With large numbers of baby boomers reaching retirement and fewer people choosing to go into education, there’s a lot of uncertainty ahead, according to Rapid City superintendent Peter Wharton.
Education’s most daunting task will be to come up with the resources for pay packages capable of competing with the private and public sector, Wharton said.
“We see the challenges in the future unlike anything we’ve experienced in the past,” he said. “We have less and less people in the pool of candidates and more challenges in competing when our hands are tied with scarce resources.”
Melmer is encouraged by recent reports from Black Hills State University and South Dakota State University that indicate more students are preparing for careers as math and science teachers. BHSU graduated 13 math and science education majors this month, compared with five in 2006, he said.
“We’re seeing the numbers improve, but still not the numbers we need to meet the demand,” Melmer said.
Finding more money to pay teachers could help, but it won’t necessarily solve the problem, he said.
“There are still going to be rural areas of our state where even salaries will not attract people because they don’t have some of the amenities our younger population is looking for,” Melmer said.
Predicting the impact that retirements will have on the teaching force is difficult, Melmer said. Most teachers in South Dakota qualify for early retirement when they reach 55, but many wait to retire.
“We know how many qualify, but we don’t know how many are actually going to retire,” he said.
There is also a growing trend for educators to retire and then be re-hired by the same or another school district, Melmer said.
At 55 and with 33 years of experience teaching, Lyle Pagel has just reached the “magic age” to qualify for early retirement under the state and Rapid City School District’s retirement programs.
By retiring, Pagel is keeping a pledge he made several years ago not to become “some old, grumpy teacher” hanging around to get a few more years in the retirement system.
That time has come.
The Stevens High School science teacher and coach is exhausted.
Pagel coached boys’ and girls’ basketball and track throughout his 27 years at Stevens.
With teaching and coaching two sports during the school year, Pagel estimates that he has put in about 400 hours more than someone who works a 40-hour week.
“This year, I ran out of gas about Christmas time,” Pagel said. “You just feel that the energy is going.”
At Stevens, Pagel has 120 students spread across six class periods. He has one planning period and a lunch break. The days are long and demanding, he said.
Pagel said the stress increased a few years ago when the school district required high school teachers to teach another class, losing a planning period, as a cost savings measure. At first the impact from the extra class seemed minor, but as that first year progressed it became more of a burden.
“Teaching is so all encompassing of your time,” Pagel said. Summer vacations were once enough to rekindle his enthusiasm and send him back to the classroom fully charged, but not the last few years, he said.
As he looks forward to retirement, Pagel will miss his students’ energy and enthusiasm but not the challenge of having to prepare lessons that capture the attention of an increasingly diverse group of students.
For six classes a day teachers must be prepared to take the stage for their students, Pagel said.
“They’re expecting something from you when they walk in the door and they should,” he said. “You have to be ready to perform every day for them or else they lose faith in you and what you’re trying to accomplish for them.”
Pagel’s only plan for next year is “rest and relaxation” and taking care of his wife’s lengthening “honey-do” list.
The Blackhursts look forward to traveling and completing master’s degrees in natural health. Their five children are scattered at both ends of the country, Shari Blackhurst, 65, said.
A driving trip to Alaska is scheduled for September to distract the veteran teachers from the annual return to school.
Teaching at Rapid City Christian since the school’s beginning has been rewarding for Shari Blackhurst.
Working in the small high school has allowed her to share her faith and her love of accounting and computers with students.
“You get much more acquainted and close to the kids,” she said. It has been rewarding to watch the transformation of awkward seventh-graders into confident seniors, she said.
Because her career was spent in a private school, Shari Blackhurst does not have the same retirement benefits her husband will have, but the trade off was the satisfaction of contributing not only to the academic, but also the spiritual and emotional growth of her students.
“So that they can go on and make a difference,” Shari Blackhurst said.
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Contact Andrea Cook at 394-8423 or andrea.cook@rapidcityjournal.com
Shari Blackhurst, a business and computer teacher at Rapid City Christian High School, watches Kathleen Wombold take a test. After 24 years on the staff of Rapid City Christian, Blackhurst is retiring.(Photo by Andrea Cook, Journal staff)
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