Connecticut teachers struggle with host of concerns

Nearly 97% of Connecticut teachers say job stress and burnout is a top concern according to new survey data that highlights educators’ persistent struggles and growing concern for student well-being in post-pandemic classrooms.
The poll results, released Monday by the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, show little sign of improving job satisfaction and morale among educators as public schools continue to contend with staffing shortages, beleaguered budgets and mounting mental health challenges.
Of the 875 teachers surveyed, nearly 50% said they intend to “retire or leave education earlier than planned,” and 32% anticipate leaving the profession within the next five years. Another 64% said they would not recommend a career in teaching to friends and family.
The survey data also provides alarming insights into student behavior and mental health. According to the poll, nearly 90% of educators said their students are exhibiting increased stress or anxiety and 54% said students are experiencing increased depression or suicidal ideation. Another 63% of teachers said they have needed to evacuate their classrooms due to student disruptions that place other pupils at risk.
“For several years, we have been sounding the alarm about the challenges impacting student learning and the teaching profession,” CEA President Kate Dias said. “As our cries for help continue to go unanswered, the problems facing public education have intensified. Our educators are underpaid, undervalued, and under a lot of stress, leading them to look for other careers that provide higher pay, improved working conditions, and greater respect.”
Dias said the “predominant issue” is burnout.
“When you see 97%, you might as well see 100% of the educators saying ‘We have got to solve this problem,’” Dias said.
“We feel like we’re continuously adding to the responsibilities and expectations without ever editing and saying ‘Is this manageable?’” Dias added. “You couple that with the low pay…and then you marry it with the lack of respect, the concerns about discipline, the mental health issues and you really start to feel (this) sense of overwhelm, like ‘I’m here because I care about kids. I want to do really important work and yet, I don’t know that I’m going to be able to do that.’”
The survey spanned more than 50 questions ranging from teacher shortages to classroom spending to bullying to indoor air quality and more. Here are highlights from the data and the Courant’s conversation with Dias.
Approximately 70% of teachers say their current salary is not fair compensation.
According to the survey, 70% of educators say they do not consider their salary fair pay for their level of education. Nearly 40% reported that they have taken up another job because their current compensation either does not cover their expenses or does not allow them to save for the future.
Dias said the starting salary for a teacher in Connecticut is around $48,000 — a figure that she said is far too low for a workforce with “high levels of education experience and responsibility.”
“The most recent data is that it requires $100,000 for an independent individual to live in Connecticut. So we’re asking educators to come in and halve that and that’s not a reasonable expectation,” Dias said. “We recognize that we’re not corporate America — we get that — but at the same time, we are a highly competitive workforce.”
Dias said that the number of teachers coming out of Connecticut’s educator prep programs are struggling to keep pace with the number of teachers retiring or leaving the profession. Dias said low pay perpetuates this cycle, especially in underfunded districts.
“If the salaries are low and the conditions are difficult, you’re going to continue to struggle to fill those jobs,” Dias said.
Dias said CEA is advocating for state funds that will be directly earmarked for salaries.
“There’s an opportunity this legislative session to have a real, comprehensive conversation about how to build out sustainable models to improve teacher salary,” Dias said. “We can’t do it through lump sum ECS (Education Cost Sharing) funding. There needs to be strategic direct funding that goes towards raising teacher salary.”
More than 80% of educators say students are displaying increased aggression.
Approximately 82% of respondents said their students are exhibiting “increased aggression and dysregulated behavior” compared to years past.
About 63% of teachers said they evacuated their classrooms due to student disruptions that have put other students in danger. More than 70% said they have heard of their colleagues or students being harmed by another pupil and that 35% said they have been harmed themselves.
“People don’t understand … that we’ve had elementary age, like kindergarten, first grade, kids throw chairs and break windows and teachers get harmed in those spaces as a result of that,” Dias said. “They will absolutely destroy a classroom in a matter of minutes.”
Dias said that evacuations occur when students “become highly agitated” due to anxiety, frustration or stress and start to exhibit destructive behaviors.
“When we have to evacuate a classroom, it’s for the safety and security of all of the children involved,” Dias said. “It’s often very stressful, not just for the student who’s kind of in the center of the whirlwind and experiencing all of this stress and frustration and anger … but it’s also a really stressful experience for the children who are in those spaces with them.”
Dias said that part of the challenge is that districts often have “a high threshold” for behavior they allow “to go on in a classroom before a significant intervention will take place.”
“We’re trying to work with our local leaders, our principals, our school social workers to say, ‘How do we intervene sooner so that we don’t get to that space.’”
Dias said the solution will take a systemwide, trauma-informed approach that involves administrators, teachers, parents and mental health professionals to reduce unsafe behaviors.
In general, Dias said teachers are “very worried” about their students’ mental health.
“We have a lot of conversations around data points about academic performance and not nearly enough conversations about ‘Well, how are we managing some of these really disruptive behaviors, these challenges that we’re facing?’” Dias said.
According to the survey, while a majority of educators say their students are experiencing increased stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, distractions, disengagement, social withdrawal and family problems, 78% of teachers said they are not “equipped to deal with” their students’ mental health challenges.
“We have to remember that all of us as educators are trained to be educators, not therapists,” Dias said.
“We know that to be accessible to learn, you have to have some sense of safety and security,” Dias added. “What a lot of this data is telling us is that we have to look at our students and talk about how we’re supporting them, not only in their ability to grow academically, but (in) the social emotional welfare.”
Dias said that tackling these concerns to ensure that students feel safe and ready to learn will take “a whole system commitment.”
Teachers want more respect.
Roughly 90% of teachers said it is a “somewhat” or “very serious problem” that “educators are not treated like professionals.” Nearly 81% also expressed concern over “public hostility and criticism of educators and curriculum.”
Dias said “the way we communicate, talk to and treat our educators” matters.
“Our districts need to own that some of this lies in how we lead our district,” Dias said. “If you lean into a bully pulpit of leadership, you’re not going to have educators who feel respected.”
Dias said that teachers with decades of experience should not feel like their perspectives are dismissed by district and school leaders.
“We want to be treated as professionals. We want to be invited into the conversations about how we solve the problems in our districts,” Dias said. “Not everything is a legislative fix. Some things are fixed at the ground level in terms of how we manage our school districts.”
Teachers want phones out of the classroom too.
According to the poll, 90% of teachers expressed support for district policies that “prohibit student use of cellphones during instructional time.” Approximately 77% said they would support extending phone restrictions to the entire school day.
Roughly 60% of educators said student cellphone use is “somewhat” or “very disruptive”
“We have all of these distractions kind of pushing into our instructional spaces,” Dias said. “Districts (are) saying we can’t be relaxed about this, it continues to be a stressor for us.”
Despite continued challenges, Dias said teachers are still optimistic.
While 60% of teachers surveyed said they are “indifferent” or “not looking forward to” returning to their classrooms for the 2024-2025 year, Dias said her conversations with educators tell a different story.
Dias said teachers “start every school year incredibly optimistic” and that Connecticut educators “are really committed to improving our school environments for the students.”
“Regardless of what this survey says, I’ve been out in the field talking to teachers and they are excited to welcome students,” Dias said. “We look forward to maybe changing the story over the course of the school year where we’re talking about the incredible successes we’re having because that’s how we start every school year — with this clean slate of an opportunity to really do amazing work.”
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