By By Greg Sukiennik,Stephanie Zollshan — The Berkshire Eagle,The Berkshire Eagle

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PITTSFIELD — The new leadership team of Pittsfield Public Schools faced a daunting task as schools opened for the fall: Finding enough teachers and staff to fill vacancies on short notice.

A few weeks into the school year, that task continues.

Job openings for educators at Herberg Middle School, Conte Community School, Stearns Elementary School, Reid Middle School and Pittsfield High School have recently been posted on the district’s employment page. Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips is also expected to present an update on district staffing when the School Committee meets Wednesday.

After the issue was raised by a resident at the Sept. 3 School Committee meeting, Phillips confirmed there were some late resignations and school-to-school movement within the district shortly before the first day of school.

“That’s something that I want to explore more this year for next year … especially internal moves, because we’re one district,” Phillips said. “When you move from one school to another school two days before the start of school, it’s still impacting the district … I want to understand how much of this happened.”

“Any time you have an opening, a transition so close to the school year, it’s big because you don’t have time to fill it, except that you have to find a substitute,” she said.

Pittsfield is not alone. School districts across the county are grappling with last-minute teacher and staff vacancies amid an ongoing national teacher shortage. On Wednesday, the North Adams and Southern Berkshire Regional districts were still advertising openings on their websites.

North Adams Superintendent Tim Callahan says the problem of filling unexpected open teacher positions right before the school year starts goes back “as long as I’ve been in a leadership role.”

There are several reasons this happens, Callahan said. Some teachers leave at the last minute for other Berkshire County districts, which also found themselves in need. Some positions take longer to fill, despite being advertised in May and June. And sometimes, there’s a communication breakdown around who is and isn’t returning.

“Every year it’s like this,” he said. “Absolutely, it’s a teacher pipeline problem … everyone’s in the same boat.”

As of Wednesday, North Adams was working to fill two openings, for a fifth-grade classroom teacher and a special education teacher, Callahan said.

In the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, Superintendent Peter Dillon said he’s still seeking a biology teacher at Monument Mountain Regional High School. He also cited a variety of factors: Shortages in high-need areas such as math and special education, district-to-district differences in compensation and the cost of living, and the cyclical nature of interest in teaching as a profession.

“Also, it’s a game of musical chairs within the county,” Dillon said.

In Pittsfield, current openings include teachers of deportment at Stearns; English Language Learner and English teachers at Herberg; and a reading interventionist, elementary teacher and classroom paraprofessional at Conte.

Herberg and Conte have the most current listings, according to the district’s page on SchoolSpring, a web-based platform widely used in education to advertise job openings and facilitate the application process.

But Phillips cautioned that the number of openings listed on the district’s SchoolSpring page doesn’t reflect the actual vacancies.

Many of the positions listed are high school coaching openings, which are not full-time jobs and are advertised every year. At least two of the open positions are administrative roles at Mercer. And Phillips said several of the positions are openings for next year that were listed in error.

In the meantime, Herberg and Conte have long-term substitutes in place and have found ways to make sure classes are covered, Phillips said Wednesday.

“All of the positions [at Herberg] have been covered — by a sub, or by someone giving up a prep period,” she said.

Phillips added that at Conte, Principal Kerry Light “is covering duties staff might have covered, so classrooms can be covered.”

The Learning Policy Institute, a think tank dedicated to “equitable and empowering education systems” for all children, says its national review of state teaching vacancy data shows “about one in eight teaching positions either unfilled or filled by a teacher who is not fully certified for the role.” That data has changed little since last year, the institute said.

During the public comment period at the Pittsfield School Committee’s Sept. 3 meeting, resident Geoffrey Buerger asked several questions about hiring, staffing and retention. Those included whether any teachers had resigned that very day, how many new hires are long-term substitutes, how many are employed on license waivers from the state, and how many teaching and paraprofessional vacancies remained.

Phillips said she would provide a detailed and up-to-date report on those questions at the School Committee’s next meeting.

“However, I will share that all those questions are questions we are discussing as a team,” she told the committee.

At Herberg, turnover came in the front office, as well: Its new principal, Ian Brown, was placed on administrative leave days before the school year began, and former Herberg teacher and Dean of Students Mike Taber was appointed to the position the day before students returned.

Brown has resigned as principal, Phillips said Wednesday.

The district openings at Mercer include assistant superintendent for business and finance, the position Kristen Behnke last held. Phillips said Behnke gave her notice in August and will be leaving at the end of this month.

The Pittsfield schools have also sought a study of the district’s human resources program, including whether the HR office is adequately staffed for an operation with nearly 1,100 employees, all requiring background checks and many requiring regular review of license status. That report is due to be submitted in about a month, School Committee Chairman William J. Cameron said on Sept. 3.