Well, yeah, to some extent most (not all) “shortages” are just things becoming more expensive than one wishes to pay. Unfortunately, teacher pay’s being stagnan

Well, yeah, to some extent most (not all) “shortages” are just things becoming more expensive than one wishes to pay. Unfortunately, teacher pay’s being stagnant (plus it took a huge hit, in relative terms, over the pandemic) and working conditions declining have been trends for long enough that a bunch of teachers have left with no plans to return, and the “pipeline” has finally caught on that the career—even if you really, really want to teach kids—kinda sucks a whole bunch now, such that teacher training programs have seen a large drop in enrollment. Higher pay will indeed go a long way toward fixing the problem, but only at a significant lag—this is on track to continue for years even with big pay bumps now. I definitely didn’t mean to, like, blame teachers for this situation, though, so I apologize if I gave that impression. It’s definitely a matter of pay and work conditions. But, it’s gonna take a while to fix even if we throw money at it immediately, and I’m not seeing much of that yet :-/