ROCHESTER, N.Y. — School districts across the United States experienced teacher staffing shortages last year at staggering rates. 

The Rochester Teachers Association fears similar results and says it’s partly due to safety.

“It’s like safety and violence that we’ve been seeing in our communities. I think there’s a lot of struggle,” sixth-grade teacher Jacob Greenman said.

"Gone are the days where recruitment was a thing that was done in the summer,” Chris Miller, the chief of human capital at the Rochester City School District, said. 

Miller says hiring teachers has been a problem since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic because fewer people are entering the education field and more people are leaving it. 

“Teachers have been stressed and it has led to burnout,” Miller said. “In addition, the staffing shortages have led some staff to have to take on additional work or to work with substitute and support children that way.”

But the president of Rochester's Teachers Association, Adam Urbanski, says violence has also played a role in the shortages. A recent poll surveying RCSD teacher representatives showed that 80% of faculty feel unsafe on campus. 

“The overwhelming majority of teachers, they said, feel unsafe in the parking lots and in the schools,” Urbanski said. “And that is affecting our problem with staffing of our schools,” Urbanski adds that there have already been 55 incidents reported to the Rochester Police Department so far this year of either car thefts, carjackings or break-ins on school property. “So the best thing that we could do to help ourselves on the recruiting teachers is to improve the safety at school and on-premises,” he said.

Urbanski says he's been working with community leaders to reduce crime on the streets, while the district is focusing on a personalized approach to training new teachers. 

“We are taking the work into our own hands by working to grow our own developing partnerships with institutes of higher education, encouraging middle school students and high school students to go and become teachers and supporting the staff,” Miller said. 

“These efforts are in hopes to find and retain new teachers, like Mr. Greenman who has recently joined RCSD. 

“In this building, in this room, I feel safe,” Greenman said. “I know there's growing violence in our city especially. And other cities [as well]. So I know it's not just Rochester, but there's definitely growing violence and that is scarier.” 

Greenman says he understands Rochester's needs because it’s his community too. 

“I knew our city has a history of maybe struggling a little bit,” he said. “And I just wanted to be a part of like the push to make a change for the better” 

Greenman says he likes teaching sixth graders because they're at the age where they can start communicating like adults. That's why Greenman says he is focused on making sure everyone in his classroom has their voice heard because he knows many of his scholars' families are directly impacted by city violence. 

“It's the responsibility of all the adults in children's lives to communicate with each other and to work together to break that cycle,” Urbanski said. 

Greenman says that cycle starts with a conversation to guide his scholars to a brighter future and ultimately to create a safer community for the next generation of educators. 

“I’m ready to continue my career, stay and see what my future holds,” Greenman said. “Can’t get rid of me already.”