More than six hundred Brevard County teachers have left the job in the last three years. According to a report in Florida Today, low pay, overcrowded classrooms and unruly students are some of the reasons teachers are leaving.
Florida Today watchdog education reporter Caroline Glenn joins Intersection to discuss her reporting on teacher morale and attrition.
Glenn says morale is "at somewhat of a low point right now."
"What I found from the teachers that I talked to is that it's much more than that. It's a system driven by test scores, where they have really crowded classrooms, where there are so few teachers that they are just inundated with reports."
"Some of these counties that teachers are going to, like Orange or Indian River or Broward, they don't even pay that much more... but it seems to be enough to be luring them from Brevard."
Glenn says the school district is trying to recruit and retain more teachers.
"They're really focusing on the University of Central Florida and Eastern Florida State College for where they recruit their teachers from," she says.
"And then once teachers get in the district, they've started a program that buddies up a first year teacher with a more veteran teacher. They've started something called 'rookie of the year' award, kind of like the teacher of the year awards."
Education reporting on WMFE is supported by Helios Education Foundation