Teachers who left Tulsa Public Schools share frustrations

“I really like working with children from underserved communities,” said Donaldson, who every summer looked forward to the students the new school year would bring her way.

“I love the thought that I might be the one to help them change their life for the better. And I also love learning from them.”

But heading into this school year, things are much different for Donaldson.

Formerly an elementary school English teacher with Tulsa Public Schools, she is now looking for another job.

Over its last seven regular meetings dating back to May 6, TPS’ board has accepted resignations from 241 teachers, including Donaldson. Some exits are due to retirement, while others left for other districts or other professions altogether. A handful left because their spouse took a job or military posting in another state.

By comparison, during that same window in 2022 and 2023, the board approved 360 and 219 teacher separations, respectively.

Those figures do not include principals, speech pathologists and school counselors who are required to have a teaching certificate. They also do not include certified teachers who are still with the district but moved into other positions outside the classroom.

In light of a proposal to allow individuals without a bachelor’s degree to be hired as adjunct teachers, multiple people questioned at Monday night’s school board meeting whether TPS is doing enough to retain certified teachers who already work for the district.

“Twenty-eight percent attrition for 2022-’23 shows me we are not listening to our teachers. We’re not doing the things that we need to retain them,” District 2 board representative Calvin Moniz said Monday night. “I wonder if the (teacher recruiting) budget spent on advertising could have been better spent on retention.”

The district’s retention rate from the 2023-2024 school year has not been finalized yet. Along with 39 separations on the consent agenda at Monday night’s meeting, the board approved the 2024-2025 contracts for 63 new-to-TPS teachers, 424 returning teachers with four years of experience or less, 228 returning teachers with more than four years of experience and 36 apprentice teachers, or individuals who have at least a bachelor’s degree and are working towards their teaching certification.

However for Donaldson, the decision to leave had been a long time coming as a series of mounting frustrations finally came to a head. They included expanding class sizes; the hiring of more and more inexperienced, underqualified teachers; and the increasing micromanagement of teachers by school administrators, she said.

Donaldson said she was also frustrated with curriculum choices that she felt were not the best for students, and the lack of freedom she was given to depart from the curriculum as she judged best.

Several of those frustrations were shared with the Tulsa World by several other former TPS teachers across multiple campuses who left the district after the 2023-2024 school year.

‘Fun teaching again’

Along with feeling unsupported by building and district administrators, another teacher specifically pointed to the impact of the accreditation threats from state Superintendent Ryan Walters as part of her reason for leaving TPS for a teaching position with a suburban district closer to home.

“Last year was rough,” she said. “Rougher than normal.”

Formerly at a Title I elementary school, the teacher agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity to protect her new job.

Similar to Donaldson’s experience, she said she had little control over her class’ content schedule in an effort to meet test performance demands. Rather than cover material at the pace and order that worked best for her third-grade students, she said she was expected to follow a set timetable. With more than a dozen observation sessions from her building’s administrators during the first semester alone, ignoring that pre-planned schedule was not a realistic option.

“It became too overwhelming,” she said. “It was so rigid on how we had to do things. People who go into teaching want to be able to do fun things and have some flexibility with their students.

“Part of learning is playing games. Those were the things my kids enjoyed getting to do, but we weren’t able to do that.”

Concerned that that level of micromanagement would be the same at other TPS elementary schools, she said she did not even consider switching to another campus within the district.

“I wanted to have fun teaching again,” she said. “And I didn’t feel like I could do that in TPS.”

Through the first few days of professional development at her new district, she said she has already been given gift cards both from her building administrator and district leadership to help set up her classroom. Instead of bracing for up to 31 students like she had last year, there are 20 on her class roster going into the first day of school.

Additionally, she and other teachers new to the district — including one from her former TPS site — were also told up front at a professional development event that they could set the pacing calendars.

For her, that freedom has been liberating and empowering.

“I feel more like a professional,” she said.

Count the kids

For Elizabeth Martin, the decision to retire at the end of the 2023-2024 school year after more than 30 years in the classroom was a difficult one, but necessary in order to leave while she still enjoys teaching.

“We have the best team at Council Oak,” she said, noting that she cried over her decision to retire. “We have such a great group of educators. That was hard to leave.”

Since retiring, Martin has pursued her dream of opening an art studio in her garage apartment and has started teaching again — albeit with much smaller classes.

“My classes are capped at four,” she said. “They’re tiny on purpose. A first grader in one of my classes looked around the other day, noticed that she was noticed and that we were working in a small enough group that she could get the help and attention that she needed.”

‘I just wanted to help’

Former Carver Middle School science teacher Chris Hernandez got into public school teaching by a nontraditional route.

A onetime Tulsa college professor-turned-advertising agency owner, Hernandez had retired from the latter career with no plans to go back to work.

But when his daughter’s school put out an urgent appeal for substitute teachers, he stepped up. That led him later to go full time through TPS’ alternative certification program, Tulsa Teacher Corps.

“I just wanted to help,” he said.

Despite a love for the classroom and his students, Hernandez, now 71, made the decision earlier this year to walk away.

“I was just physically and emotionally exhausted,” he said.

His three years at Carver were eye-opening, he said, adding that the school environment was “sheer chaos.”

“Student behavior — the rudeness and disrespect; the disorganization; bad communications; lack of support from administrators,” he said. “In my experience, it felt almost like the opposite of support from the school administration. It’s like they are undermining teachers.”

Multiple factors have combined, he said, to create a school community where everyone is operating in a “sort-of desperation mode.”

Hernandez said he still admires the truly dedicated teachers.

“I cannot say enough good things about those who soldier through because they have a real passion, a real sense of mission,” he said. “They really want to do a good job in the classroom and be the kind of teachers that students deserve. My hat is totally off to them.”

But in his experience, he saw very few of those kinds of teachers.

“I think a lot of people are just trying to hang on, white-knuckled, until they can retire,” he said. “And that’s a depressing environment. I think they feel hopeless.”

Hernandez said there are any number of possible reasons the school environment he witnessed has reached this low point. But the bottom line, he’s convinced, is that public education is no longer valued in society.

“I think what we need is more resources for public education,” he said. “For that to happen, we need a political community that actually believes in public education.”

‘I just keep thinking of those kids’

When Benjamin Ray signed on as the band director at Central Middle and High School in 2021 after working part-time at Union Public Schools, he knew he was walking into a challenge.

He didn’t expect the challenge to be from administrators.

“I was never assigned a mentor teacher,” he said. “My first year was very hard because I was blamed for so much and I had almost no resources. I didn’t even get a phone list for months and I’d get slapped on the hand when I acted out of ignorance.”

Despite the lack of administrative support, Ray stayed for three years and grew the middle school’s band program to include more than 100 students.

However, the joy of teaching was gone by spring after having to constantly fight for things like getting the building schedule to avoid setting a concert on a testing day or access to the band program’s bank account in order to replace reeds and pads on school-owned woodwind instruments.

Even trying to get answers to simple questions from the district office quickly became an exercise in futility, he said.

“I would just come home and sit motionless for hours,” he said. “I didn’t enjoy teaching the kids because I was having to fight battles that were so unnecessary and basic.”

He said he wants to eventually go back to teaching, just not at TPS. Because he did not resign until after the end of the school year, he did not get to say goodbye to his now former students.

“I just keep thinking of those kids,” he said. “And I feel bad, but I just can’t keep going for my own mental health.”

Room for improvement

On Friday, TPS Superintendent Ebony Johnson told the Tulsa World that she had previously heard the concerns raised by Hernandez, Donaldson, Miner and other former TPS teachers. She said she had personally contacted several teachers after seeing their names on board agendas’ separation lists, which kept a handful of educators from leaving TPS.

“I knew early on that we’ve had some serious issues when it came to some of our teachers not feeling seen, heard, appreciated or supported,” she said.

Although there have been some listening sessions with teachers and administrators, Johnson acknowledged there is still a lot of room for improvement.

“What do we need to do prior to them actually submitting their resignation? We are building that out as we speak,” she said.

Meanwhile, Donaldson, who began her education career as a teaching assistant, is continuing her job search.

She said the decision to leave without having a job lined up was a little scary. But one thing she is sure of: “I would go work at Costco or Barnes & Noble or something like that before I would go back to TPS.”

The ongoing departure of teachers from the district does not bode well for the future, she added.

“The more qualified teachers leave, the more unqualified teachers you’re going to have,” she said. “And they don’t come in ready for this — for the stress and the reality that is the teaching profession.”

“I feel like we’re in this downward spiral, and I don’t know how we’re going to get out of it.”

World staff writer Andrea Eger contributed to this story.

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