Shortly after school started last fall, Oregon teachers already were burning out.

A return from distance learning coupled with staffing shortages in many school districts meant educators had higher workloads and more stress.

In a handful of districts, including Portland, Eugene, Beaverton and Hillsboro, more than 80% of teachers said they couldn’t get all their work done during regular hours. In Clackamas County, 41.5% of Oregon City teachers surveyed last fall cited “unsustainable stress levels.”

In Portland, nearly half of teachers surveyed in October 2021 told their union they planned to retire early or leave the profession. In Hillsboro, that number was 68%.

“In far too many districts, staff are keeping schools functioning through long working hours and sheer will,” Oregon Education Association leaders noted in a January report called Education at a Breaking Point.

The report used surveys compiled from several districts. It mirrored results from a national survey of educators who said they planned to leave the profession sooner than expected due to pandemic-related stress.

Reed Scott-Schwalbach is president of the Oregon Education Association. Scott-Schwalbach said the union hasn’t updated its surveys since the winter report was released, but across the state, the union is seeing teachers struggling to earn a living wage in places like Marion and Deschutes counties. Elsewhere, unions are advocating for smaller class sizes to reduce their workloads, while others in districts like Newberg have left over controversial decisions and political differences with elected district leadership.

“In so many districts, people were saying, ‘I’m stressed. I’ve reached a point where I have to leave this profession,’” Scott-Schwalbach noted.

The massive turnover the education association’s report warned of hasn’t taken shape in every district, but some are reporting a major uptick in retirements and resignations.

Elizabeth Israel-Davis has been a classroom teacher for more than 15 years in Portland. For the past two years, she’s been a teacher on special assignment. Israel-Davis’ job was to help develop intervention strategies for children with dyslexia. Instead, she was shuffled around to fill in as a substitute teacher at different campuses much of the time, as her district reported a lingering shortage of substitute teachers and educators.

Israel-Davis estimates about half of her year was spent subbing for other classes, rather than doing her reading specialist job. It was worst in the winter, during the height of COVID-19 omicron outbreaks.

“At one point, we were directed to sub every day in January and February,” Israel-Davis recalled. “Often we didn’t know where we were going to be until the morning of. Sometimes teachers would leave lesson plans, but other times there were emergency sub plans. You just had to punt and do the best you could. It felt like we were an expendable workforce. They would just send us in to do what nobody else wanted or could do. There was just the aspect of having to tell all these teachers who relied on us for support, who were already so overwhelmed, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t support you. I have to go teach middle school math.’”

She contemplated leaving the profession. Instead, she left the district, taking a job with Multnomah Education Service District.

Elizabeth Thiel, who served as president of the Portland Association of Teachers during the 2021-22 school year, said she heard from teachers who “cry in their cars before going home to their families” to try to separate work-related stress from home life.

“We have heard from so many educators this year who are struggling with whether they can continue in this profession,” Thiel said. The union represents 3,615 educators across Portland Public Schools.

Annette Farrell, a paraeducator at Benson Polytechnic High School, said classroom culture has changed, along with students. It’s harder to keep kids engaged and motivated.

“The administrators all seem to be operating under the assumption that today’s students are just like the students from 10 years ago,” Farrell said. “They assume that post-pandemic Gen Z youth have a similar motivation to learn, a similar outlook about their future, a similar respect for authority, as students who were in school before the pandemic. It’s simply not true.”

Farrell said going to college isn’t the carrot it once was, and schools may need to rethink the traditional five-day school week if they want to keep students engaged.

“I fully support any teacher who decides to leave the teaching profession, and prioritize their own mental health,” Farrell added.

Following the 2021-22 school year, 190 teachers, including 77 retirees, announced their plans to leave Portland Public Schools by early July, according to data provided by the district. Another 34 principals and administrators will leave. That’s less teacher turnover than Portland schools saw in 2018-19, when it clocked 250 vacancies with a smaller workforce.

Portland Public Schools “values its teachers and principals and fully appreciates the impact they have in our classrooms,” Sydney Kelly, a district spokesperson, said in July.

In Lake Oswego, Kelly Fitzsimmons was bracing for an uptick in resignations just before the school year ended.

“Education has always been a difficult career, but the conditions of the pandemic have made it a much more difficult job over the past two years,” Fitzsimmons said. “Students need more from their teachers at this time, both academically and emotionally, and there simply isn’t enough time in the day for most educators to meet these increasing needs.”

Some say the same stressors impacting students are leading to increased workloads and burnout among teachers.

“There is a broader range now between the highest and the lowest achieving students, making it more challenging to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students,” said Courtney Marshall, a teacher at Barnes Butte Elementary in Prineville. “There also has always been students who struggle with self-regulation. However since the pandemic, it seems that this number has increased.”

The Crook County School District exemplifies a lingering urban-rural divide. At the Central Oregon district, the issue impacting teachers wasn’t overcrowding, staff shortages or salary, it was COVID-19 rules.

The district logged 169 religious exemptions to the statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandates for educators. District officials said they didn’t scrutinize teachers’ requests for vaccine exemptions and likely would have lost a big chunk of the workforce if they had.

Scott-Schwalbach of the Oregon Education Association said, in some cases, the survey results collected by the union were enough to drive changes in labor contracts or working conditions at the schools.

“We were able to sit down with districts and say, ‘Look, this is not just anecdotal evidence. We have hard data that says people are (considering leaving),’” Scott-Schwalbach said.

Even if teachers aren’t leaving immediately, the survey results from several unions point to growing dissatisfaction and increased burnout among Oregon’s education workforce.

Teachers and union leaders say Oregon legislators could fix that by devoting more funds per student, to address increased needs.

Oregon ranks 20th in the nation for spending per student, according to data released by the National Education Association in April.

Educators also say scheduling could alleviate workload stress.

Israel-Davis, the Portland teacher, said many districts around the country have a weekly early dismissal or late start schedule to give teachers time to plan and collaborate.

“That could go really far in helping everybody deal,” she said. “When you can plan and collaborate, you’re not constantly reacting.”

“I think a big part of this year’s frustration and burnout is so many teachers feeling like they were failing their students, just because of unreasonable expectations and circumstances,” Israel-Davis said. “Teachers will teach through anything if we think we’re going to help our students or reach our students, and I think a lot of (us) just lost that.”