An all-time high in the number of special ed students has led to a ‘dire’ shortage of trained school staff in Pa. and beyond

The nationwide teacher shortage is well documented. But another category of school workers is also in alarmingly short supply.

Special education assistants — key school staff who support students with disabilities — are highly sought after in many schools and districts, according to school leaders and staffing agencies.

In Philadelphia, the shortage is acute. While the district has filled 97% of its teacher vacancies, its special education assistant fill rate is 83%, with 564 unfilled jobs across its 216 schools.

» READ MORE: There are more than 20 vacant special education assistant jobs at this Philly school — a ‘dangerous’ situation, staffers say

But the problem isn’t just limited to Philadelphia or to urban districts. In the well-regarded Central Bucks school system, one middle school reported a third of its personal care assistant positions — eight of 24 — vacant at the start of the school year.

One reason for the vacancies? Demand. The number of students classified as needing special education services in the U.S. is at an all-time high — for 2022-23, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 7.5 million students, or 15% of all public school pupils, had disabilities. Ten years prior, there were 6.4 million students with disabilities.

“This has a direct impact on me, my school, my students,” Lenape Middle School special education teacher Angelo Menta told the Central Bucks district’s school board in September, describing the situation as “dire.”

With aides reassigned to children with the most severe needs, Menta said, other students who also need support may start “slipping through the cracks.”

A Central Bucks spokesperson said the number of Lenape vacancies has since dropped to six, and the district was confident student needs were being met.

Steven Yanni, the Central Bucks superintendent, said in a recent interview that while the district had largely been spared from ongoing teacher shortages, “where we’re really having a shortage is in our support staff.”

”They’re really, really hard jobs,” with tasks ranging from helping kids use the bathroom and assisting with feeding tubes, to navigating for students with impaired vision, Yanni said. Like a number of districts, Central Bucks’ special education population has “exploded” over the past few years, he said, and the district has added dozens of support staff positions.

But it’s becoming harder for schools to compete with retail companies, Yanni said — noting sign-on bonuses at companies like Home Depot and pay rates of $24 to $25 an hour. (Central Bucks’ starting rate for a personal care assistant is $18.43 an hour, though current staffers earn between $18.62 and $24.10).

Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, characterized the special education shortage in the city as “horrific.”

“It was bad last year,” Steinberg said, “and it’s grown this year.” Some schools have or have had double-digit shortages: George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Sciences earlier this month had 17 unfilled jobs, Roxborough High School had 16, Richmond Elementary had 14, Dobson Elementary had 11, and Emlen Elementary had 9, according to the PFT.

“They’re opening additional special education positions, but they don’t have the staff for them,” said LeShawna Coleman, PFT’s chief of staff.

Stetson Middle School is down one special education assistant. Though that number is small, the effect is outsize, said Kathy Lajara, a special education teacher who serves as the North Philadelphia school’s special education case manager.

“I’ve worked all over the district, and it’s always been an issue — not just an issue filling the vacancies, but filling them with people who can support the work you’re doing,” said Lajara.

Stetson offers autistic support and life-skills classes, and some students in those classes have individualized education plans — federal documents, legally binding — that call for them to spend time in mainstream classrooms. But they often can’t do so without a special education assistant to support them.

It’s a conundrum that comes up often, Lajara said: Do you send the student without the required support, or keep them in their special education classroom all day in violation of their IEP?

“We’re constantly triaging situations because we don’t want the kids to lose out,” said Lajara. “There’s a lot of vacancies across the district this year, but it’s always been an issue. We don’t ever work to find sustainable solutions.”

Bruce Harris works in a number of district schools as a district special education case manager.

“It’s a significant issue,” Harris said of special education assistant vacancies. “There’s a trickle-down effect, because when that person is missing, you’re pulling on other resources in the school to support students, and that includes administration.”

In Philadelphia, Harris is seeing the number of students with “low-incidence” needs — students with autism, with multiple disabilities — grow.

“Those students have a lot of needs for support around them, and when you don’t have it, you can really run yourself into compromising safety. And instructional programming gets compromised because a teacher can’t fully focus on instruction when you have students with that level of vulnerability without the proper support.”

The labor market is tough, but districts have to get creative to hire for these jobs and streamline their cumbersome hiring processes, said Harris and Ivey Welshans, a special education teacher at Middle Years Academy, a public school in West Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s Para Pathway program, which sponsors special education assistants to earn college degrees to qualify as teachers, is a start, but more is needed, Welshans said.

“The biggest thing is, they’re not paid enough,” said Welshans. “They can go work at Taco Bell for the same money. Special ed assistants are the front line for parents, for teachers, and it’s a shame that many of them have to have second jobs.”

Matt Przywara, executive director of CCRES, a behavioral health organization that works with the Chester County Intermediate Unit to place support staff in area school districts, stressed that the competitive market has made it tougher to fill positions everywhere.

For special education support staff, the agency is only filling 70% to 80% of positions week to week, Przywara said.

”It’s a growing concern,” said Przywara.

Autistic support classrooms, for instance, are limited by the state to one teacher per eight students; normally those classrooms get a minimum of three support staff, Przywara said.

And not just anyone can fill the jobs. Support staff need two years postsecondary education, and have to pay upward of $125 for clearances before being hired. (Some districts do cover the cost of clearances.)

”These are critical positions,” said Jack Hurd, director of human resources for the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, which helps districts hire support staff and also runs programming for students with more significant special needs. “Even if we get candidates, we have to find the right candidate.”