Giving Compass' Take:

• There is a huge pay gap between special education teachers and general education teachers, despite special ed teachers serving students with the most needs. 

• How can the school system and state work to remedy this gap? Where would funding have to shift to make this a reality? 

• Read why special education teachers should also be trained as leaders. 

Inside classroom No. 12 at Brooklyn’s HeartShare Taranto preschool, children play side-by-side with blocks, puzzles, or at a pretend kitchen each day. Roughly half are students with disabilities, including physical impairments, autism, and speech delays. The others are typically developing children.

The Bensonhurst program is one of hundreds of community-based organizations that are part of Pre-K For All, the city’s free preschool program for 4-year-olds. Classroom No. 12 is supposed to have at least two certified teachers — one who is qualified in general education, and one qualified to work with children with special needs.

But the special education teacher left at the beginning of the year in search of a higher paycheck at a public school. The spot has been vacant ever since.

In a quirk of the system, general education teachers at privately-run preschools like Taranto are paid through city-funded contracts, while the special education preschool teachers they work alongside are paid mostly by the state. The general education teachers recently won massive raises to close the pay gap between privately-run preschools and their public school counterparts. But no such raise was given to special education pre-K teachers.

That means teachers serving students with disabilities — arguably some of the children with the highest needs — are making the lowest salaries. Special education teachers might earn about $30,000 less, on average, than general education teachers they sometimes share a room with, according to advocates. Preschool directors who run special education classrooms fear it will now become even harder to hold onto their teachers, who have more opportunities to leave for higher paychecks in programs that enroll typically developing children.

The city provides less than half of the funding given to special education programs, which also receive federal dollars. Advocates have called on the city to create a separate retention and recruitment fund for special education teachers. It’s unclear how much such a fund would cost, partially because it’s unclear how many teachers there are‚ though the Interagency Council estimates there are around 1,000, according to public records.

Read the full article about special education teacher shortage by Christina Veiga at Chalkbeat.