MACON, Ga. — Editor's note: Video in this story is from recent coverage of a teacher job fair.
There's a science teacher at Ballard Hudson Middle School who has been on the job since the start of the school year without ever setting foot inside the classroom.
An in-person substitute teacher observes students learning and keeps watch over the class while students listen and watch screens playing a livestreamed video of the teacher, who lives out of town.
An ongoing national shortage of teachers means that students in some districts are more likely to be in classrooms without teachers.
The shortage has prompted districts, including Bibb County, to hire virtual teachers for classes where hiring a traditional in-person teacher has proven to be a challenge.
The first virtual teachers were hired in Bibb Schools in 2016. That year, the University System of Georgia awarded the fewest number of degrees in education-related programs recorded in the past decade. Bibb Schools has since hired virtual teachers on an as-needed basis.
In December, the Board of Education voted to hire up to 14 virtual teachers to help fill some of the more than 30 vacant teaching positions in Bibb. The instructors, certified to teach in Georgia, are employed by Proximity Learning, a Delaware corporation based in Texas providing virtual teachers to school districts with teacher shortages across the country.
Fulton, Greene and Muscogee counties also use the company for virtual teachers.
“The university system has not been producing the number of education majors as they have in the past,” said Bibb County Schools Superintendent Curtis Jones.
To compensate, the district has also focused on recruitment of adults looking to change careers and has explored the military’s Troops to Teachers program, which helped service members transition to the classroom. The program was launched in 1993 but was canceled by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2020.
“What the pandemic showed, though, was that even those measures were not enough to keep up,” Jones said.
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