Cities aim to stem teacher shortages

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

As the days get shorter, first-grade teacher Esmeralda Jiminez watches the dimming afternoon sky outside her classroom window the way her pupils watch the clock at dismissal time.

The studio apartment Jiminez rents for $1,783 a month, or 43 percent of her salary, is in one of San Francisco’s sketchiest neighborhoods. Getting home involves running a gauntlet of dirty sidewalks, popping crack pipes, discarded needles and menacing comments – daily irritants that are more daunting after dark.

“If I lived in a better area, I wouldn’t feel so scared going home, and I would be able to stay at school a little longer,” Jiminez, 26, said. “You have so many things to do to prep for the next day, but it’s gotten to the point where even if I leave at a decent time I will walk three blocks out of my way to avoid some streets.”

It’s a scenario that has Jiminez wondering if she should find a profession that pays more, and public officials here and in other cities looking at housing as a tool to prevent the exodus of young educators like her.

Inspired by the success in the heart of the Silicon Valley of a 70-unit teachers-only apartment complex, school districts in high cost-of-living areas and rural communities that have long struggled to staff classrooms are considering buying or building rent-subsidized apartments as a way to attract and retain teachers amid concerns of a looming shortage.

Housing costs especially have become a point of friction for teachers in expensive cities such as Seattle, where teachers who went on a one-week strike in September said they could not afford to live in the same city as the children they teach.