Auburn Sen. Asks for Help in Filling Teacher Vacancies

Indi­ana state sen­ater Den­nis Kruse of Auburn, who chairs the Senate’s edu­ca­tion com­mit­tee, is ask­ing his state’s leg­is­la­ture to aggres­sively tackle a short­age of teach­ers enter­ing the class­room. Reports have shown the num­ber of first-time teach­ers has dropped by nearly 20 per­cent over the past five years, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to fill vacan­cies and forc­ing many school sys­tems to start the year with sub­sti­tute teach­ers. Edu­ca­tions offi­cials say some teacher train­ing pro­grams have lost nearly half their enroll­ment numbers.