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When schools have high rates of teacher turnover, students lose connections to trusted educators, and new teachers who fill the openings are often less experienced.
Producers Mateo Tang O’Reilly, from Central Park East High School, CPEHS, and Katelyn Melville, from the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, BILA, compare turnover at their schools and examine how turbulent relationships between teachers and administrators might play a role in retaining or losing educators.
David Wertz, a former music teacher at BILA, shares his experience about his struggles with administrators, ultimately driving him from the school. And Candice Ligator, a teacher-turned-administrator at CPEHS, reflects on what supportive relationships between teachers and administrators can look like — helping us think differently about how that dynamic could be rebuilt.
P.S. Weekly is available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org.
P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.
Listen for new P.S. Weekly episodes Thursdays this spring.
Read the transcript below
Katelyn: So I’m in the lunchroom right now. Can you tell me about a teacher who left and how that affected you?
Student 1: I’d say Ms. Frank Levine, because she was my first advisor when I came into the school, and she really pushed me to, you know, be more out there. So, like, when she dropped the news on me, it was kind of like a bomb like, and I just started crying. I was like, Oh my gosh.
Student 2: Oh, Ms. Dutta. Ms. Dutta. I love Ms. Dutta so much. She was so funny, she was so kind. She was a great teacher, and she really helped me learn algebra.
Katelyn: You’re hearing students from BILA. This stands for the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts. I go here, and I’m asking questions about a problem we seem to be facing,
Student 2: You know, like you have those, like school moms, you know, not in a weird way, but, you know, like in a friend wing. You know, it was really sad that she was leaving, like, other teachers left, and it was sad, but like, I don’t know, like, she was just like, there since, like, the beginning, beginning.
Student 1: It affected me in so many ways, because she was there since I was a freshman, and unfortunately, she wasn’t able to see me blossom.
Katelyn: The problem is teacher turnover rates, for some reason, it’s super high at my school,
Mateo: But at my school, it’s not I’m Mateo Tang O’Reilly, a sophomore at Central Park East High School, or CPEHS,
Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn Melville, and this is P.S. Weekly, the sound of the New York City school system. Okay, so I’m a senior, and I’m graduating in a couple months, which is still really crazy to me. But I was just thinking about my time in high school and everything I’ve been through, and I realized a lot of the teachers I started out with just aren’t here anymore, like they left.
Mateo: Yeah, I mean, that’s crazy. I’ve only been at CPEHS for a year, and I’ve only seen one teacher leave, and he had already been there for a while. So I guess I can’t really relate to that.
Katelyn: Yeah, it’s weird. Not a lot of people seem to. I was thinking, maybe it’s a location thing. Maybe demographics might have something to do with it.
Mateo: I mean, I’ve got both school profiles pulled up right now and they look similar,
Katelyn:Yeah. I mean, both of our schools, they have predominantly black and brown students, and also students coming from low income backgrounds.
Mateo: Our schools are also really small. I think mine has around 500 students, and yours as well, right?
Katelyn: Yeah. Well, here’s a difference. CPEHS is a screened school that looks for students with high grades.
Mateo: Okay true, and BILA doesn’t, it’s unscreened, but I wonder if there are other factors. Have you ever filled out those student surveys?
Katelyn: Yeah, I just did one the other day.
Mateo: I think they might have one for teachers. Let’s check. Let me just open.
Katelyn: Okay, so you’ll look up yours, I’ll do mine,
Mateo: uh, teacher, principal, trust,
Katelyn: Wait, wait, found it. I found this from Panorama Education, which does the surveys for the DOE.
Mateo: Wow. My teacher, principal, trust is 100%
Katelyn: 100%!!
Mateo: Yeah.
Katelyn: Can I see?!
Mateo: Yeah?
Katelyn: Out of how many responses,
Mateo: There’s 34
Katelyn: That’s insane, like genuinely crazy. I feel like, with these surveys, you never get anything being unanimous ever. If you look at mine, I have 63%
Mateo: Wow!
Katelyn: And 19 points less than the average, and that’s with 29 responses. So I think that says something
Mateo: Teacher admin relationships. I think that may be a difference worth looking at.
Katelyn: Seems like it. According to the most recent public data, 59% of teachers at BILA have less than three years of experience.
Mateo: And at my school, 14% of teachers have less than three years of experience. And just for comparison, according to the independent budget office, which is a nonpartisan government agency, on average, 20% of teachers at schools citywide have less than three years of experience.
Katelyn: Wow, so BILA has three times more teachers with less experience than even the city’s average.
Amy Way: Our new teachers tell us when they come in that the reasons why they may not stay where they are currently teaching, or I typically kind of are around either the commute that they have to get to the school or the support that they feel within that school building. That’s
Katelyn: Amy Way. She has a really long title, so get ready. She’s the Executive Director of the Education Department’s Office of teacher recruitment and quality at New York City’s Department of Education.
Amy Way: On the contrast when we look at reasons why people choose to stay in their school building, a lot of that is clustered around the support they get from their administrator, the support of their colleagues, a mentor.
Katelyn: So we wanted to hear directly from a former teacher at my school, BILA, just to understand, from his point of view why he decided to leave and why he thinks the teacher turnover rate is so high there. It is so good to see you. I miss you so much.
Teacher 1: Oh, I always feel bad because I’m like, I left my kids there. But like it’s sad.
Katelyn: That’s David Wertz, my former music teacher. I caught up with him while he was on vacation. So what made you want to become a teacher?
Mr. Wertz: Oh, that’s a good one. So I kind of have always wanted to be a teacher and a music teacher since like third grade. I’ve always wanted to help other people, and I really valued seeing how kids could enter a music classroom having a bad day, or having a day and like, leave with a totally different attitude because of the way that their teacher influenced them. And teachers are this magical thing that students always have somebody to lean on. And, like, even when they’re not on your side, they’re on your side.
Katelyn: So when you were hired, were you excited? Like, what were your expectations for the job?
Katelyn: Oh my gosh, I was so excited. Like, I got to move to New York City. I got to teach, like, right where near where I moved. I got to see my students on the way to school, like, this is my dream job. I actually have this photo of me sitting on the steps outside of like, and I made like, a long post on Facebook about getting hired at my first DOE school and like, all the potential of the program and how great the band room was, and how I really felt like I could do something that was really good for the kids there, like teaching high school band in New York City was like my dream job from the gecko.
Katelyn: So I know that you decided to leave, but I still want to hear about, like your first few months, like, walk me through a typical day at BILA.
Katelyn: Didn’t know this was going to be therapy. Geez. Let’s go back to orientation. So when we were getting ready for there, they had like a one week orientation where you had to go in, and they kind of told you what you had to do as a teacher. And my first job, there was a lot of leniency and lesson planning and curriculum planning, because you kind of, you know your students, and you know what to plan for them. Whereas one of the things that kind of caught me off guard with BILA was that they were like, you need to follow this exact lesson plan template, and if you don’t, okay, you can. You don’t have to, but you’ll be docked for it in your observations. So it was like, what this seems kind of not completely right, but we got to hear our BILA mission and kind of see what was important about the school, and kind of how it started as such a small school, but creating such success for students who weren’t necessarily on the track to bigger and better things because of their upbringing, or like they came from lower income households that they didn’t have the family support to pay for extra things like the SATs and stuff like that. So I was like, okay, like this school really cares about their students and really cares about pushing the envelope for success. And so orientation went pretty well overall. And they gave us all this free stuff that was like, BILA merch. And we were like, Yeah, we love BILA. Like, this is great. And then the first week happened, and that’s kind of when the fire started. I remember my first week teaching, I was leaning on a desk as I was taking attendance, and one of the assistant principals came in and yelled at me in front of the students, telling me that I should not be leading on a desk because that’s not professional in front of the kids. And I was like, Okay, this is a flavor that I was not expecting.
Katelyn: And for the record, I was in the classroom when this happened. So do you remember like, the one moment where things started to feel off? Or was that the moment?
Mr. Wertz: I think that was, like a first couple red flags kind of thing, but I was like, Okay, this is the assistant principle. Like he might be trying to prove himself, or something like that. Like, I don’t, don’t know what he’s doing, but the real moment that really like, kind of, oh, this is different. This is not what I was expecting. Was one of the teachers in the school forgot to clock in, like, move so we moved punch cards in the school, so, like, that’s how you clock in every morning. And one of him, one of them, just forgot to move the punch card. But he went to his class to teach his class and stuff, and he got shouted out on the loudspeaker in front of all the kids, telling him, if he didn’t show up to the main office in the next like, five minutes, he wasn’t getting paid. And like, that was something that was just like, oh, this is very different than what I grew up with and what I was expecting, like, this is a very different world that I’m living in now.
Katelyn: I remember that too. So how would you sum up that first year? Because I know you were there for two years. So like, did you have any doubts? And like, what made you still decide to stay another year?
Mr. Wertz: That’s really interesting. Like, literally, my first year, I was like, This is so stupid. Why am I doing this? Like, why am I putting myself through this? Because there’s no, like, there’s so many things that just don’t line up with my philosophy of education. Like, when kids do things wrong, we yell at them and we scream at them. And when kids are kids, and they’re learning like, they’re like, You guys are, like, in high school, like, that’s your time to mess up. I’m sorry, but like, that’s your time to, like, learn how to be a human so like, let’s not punish you, but let’s just guide you and, like, help you. Now granted, like, there are some things that you do need punishment for, and like, you need consequences. I’m not saying that, but I think that there, there’s a line. And there was so many times that I was just like, furious that I couldn’t do anything about it to fix it. So I was just like, I can’t be in this toxic environment anymore. But I was like, Okay, this would just be the honeymoon stage, like I just came in here, like, maybe they’re just trying to get me in my place. Once I get in my place, I’ll be fine. And, like, I made such a good connection with some of these kids that I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want to give up the ground that I’ve made so far. And I think that one of the things that pulled a lot of the staff together were some of the conditions that the admin would put us under and the stress that they would put us under. So I think that that was one of the ways that we bonded and then made us want to stick together more and stick out for each other. So I did stay one more year.
Katelyn: OK, so now can we move to your second year? How was that like? And then how did you ultimately come to that decision to finally leave.
Mr. Wertz: Okay, so the second year started off better. So I was getting students to learn how to play their instruments, and I got my beginners to the point where they could have came again and continued through and become better and continued the path, because music is all about building. Like, nobody wants to play Hot Cross Buns, but by playing that, you learn how to play the skills, and then you can get to playing the stuff that you want to play. And like, I’m all about writing out a Beyonce song for trumpet. Like, if that makes you happy, like, let’s do it, but we can’t do that until you learn product cross buns, sorry. And like, so by my second year, I was like, Okay, great. We’re coming back into this thing. I was told that I’m going to have the students that I had last year, plus some new students. This is great. And then I got there and I got all ninth graders, and I was like, Okay.
Katelyn: I was outraged. I was like, Where is Mr. Wertz? Like hello? Why do I have two math classes, and no elective? What is going on?
Mr. Wertz: And so I, I went to them and talked to them about it, and they were like, well, you don’t make a schedule. I do and you don’t have a say. So that was strike one for me, my last year there.
Katelyn: Mr. Wertz cited another moment Strike two, a conversation with BILA founding principal, Ms. Henry, right before a school performance that he planned.
Mr. Wertz: I remember me talking to her about two weeks before the concert, just nailed down some final details and stuff, and she told me that she was like, well, your kids don’t sound good at all. And I’m like, well, first off, you’ve never come into my classroom once, and that was something that really upset me, because, first off, you don’t even know. You didn’t hear the kids. And she wasn’t at graduation. The previous year, my kids played at graduation, so she told me that they sounded terrible at graduation, and I was like, you weren’t even there. You don’t even know.
Katelyn: There were more strikes. Mr. Wertz said that admin insisted he and other elective teachers incorporate English language arts into his lessons. That just didn’t make sense to him.
Mr. Wertz: I get the concept of incorporating language into other classes so that kids have the opportunity to learn language, but music is one of those universal languages, so they’re communicating with sound not communicating with words or text.
Katelyn: And there was this other moment, Mr. Wertz brought in a composer from Baltimore to work with his students, Jasmine Barnes.
Katelyn: I wanted her to come in, work with the kids, write a piece of music for the kids, and then put on a world premiere. And it was something that they got to help out and write, and she got to come in and work with the kids, and was a really great experience for them. And a week before the concert, Ms. Henry came to me and she told me that she was canceling my concert because of the kids need to study more. That was her reasoning. And I understand that the kids need to study more or whatever, but a concert was one hour, one hour that’s so meaningful to the kids. And, like, of course, I was gassing it up like no other because it’s so important for them to be able to have that experience and have the composer come but yeah, that’s that was kind of the last thing where I was like, You’re not serving my kids. You’re not letting me grow, and you’re not letting me reach out to the community to help them grow right now, this is just a job that’s paying me, and that’s not what I’m in it for.
Katelyn: And did your co-workers? Did they mirror this experience with you?
Katelyn: So many times, there were so many different experiences where my co workers had to go through similar situations where they were just doing so many great things for the kids that they had lined up and, like, just because there was a bad day in the the main office that, like, they would lose it at the last minute.
Katelyn: I asked Ms. Henry about all of this, she said that the DOE would officially get back to me, but we haven’t heard anything from them yet. Unofficially, it was a really hard conversation. Like, really hard.
Katelyn: Tell me about your new school. Like, what are you doing differently, you know? Like, what makes you happy about it? You know? What are these like changes that you’re seeing from the environment that you once were in?
Mr. Wertz: Oh, my God, let me tell you, girlie, my new school. Okay, so I teach at a six through twelfth school. The most supportive principal ever. Anytime I need something for the program, I’m told that I need to do the paperwork and stuff, but then I can do it. And there’s so many opportunities like I may want to take my kids on trips. So I took, last year, I took kids to Carnegie Hall. We went to two Broadway shows. We went to a jazz concert. The kids there are just as nerdy as BILA kids and just as challenging as BILA kids, too, and my principal trust me enough to have that liberty of like, if I’m never afraid if she walks into my classroom and sees them listening to a mindfulness thing, I’m able to put band concerts on all the time. I love the school. I love the program. They’re still hard on me, like they’re still they still challenge me, which I really value, like my observations, we talk through things and we think about ways to improve. But I’m not scared of getting, like, verbally yelled at.
Katelyn: That’s David Wertz, a music teacher formerly at BILA,
Mateo: Coming up an interview with my assistant principal and teacher from high school, that’s after the break.
Amy Zimmer: We hope you enjoy listening to PS weekly as much as we enjoy making it. I’m Amy Zimmer with Chalkbeat New York. We spend a lot of time planning each episode, setting up and conducting interviews, cutting the tape, writing scripts. It’s a long process and totally worth it. But here’s the thing, we don’t have a bunch of money or millions of followers, so we’re counting on you loyal listener to help us get the word out. Take a few seconds and send this link wherever you’re listening to three friends so they too can enjoy PS weekly. Thanks for your support.
Mateo: Welcome back to PS weekly, where Caitlin and I are talking about the impact of teacher admin relationships in New York City Schools. I’m Mateo.
Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn. Reporting this story has been tricky for me. Normally, when journalists reveal hard truths without an institution, they aren’t like about to get a diploma from there, and regardless of this issue, I’ve had a great time at BIlA. I mean, it’s a really small school, so we get to know our teachers, and they are great, amazing, and we have a great humanities department which gave me the writing skills necessary to even complete this story. But I went back to those surveys that the teachers filled out. This is from 2024 there’s a question which says, I feel respected by the principal at the school. 64% of BILA teachers said they agree or strongly agree. That’s the bottom 7% citywide for that question, there’s another question. The principal looks out for the personal welfare of the staff members. 47% of BILA teachers said they agree or strongly agree, putting them in the bottom 5% of schools citywide on that question, and teacher turnover has just been high, that’s a fact, and it’s been really hard for me.
Katelyn: And who are you?
Mike: I’m Mike Elsen-Rooney. I’m a reporter at Chalkbeat New York.
Katelyn: And why should we trust you to talk about the subject of teacher turnover?
Mike: Well, I’ll leave it up to you whether you trust me or not, but I have been covering education for about eight years, and in New York City for six years, and I was a teacher before I started reporting. So this is something I care a lot about. I’ve talked to a lot of teachers over the years the factors that lead to burnout and stress and people leaving, and it’s something that I felt myself when I was a teacher, and so I feel a lot of sympathy and compassion for what teachers deal with. And I think as a reporter, I’ve gotten to learn more about like, what are some of the larger systemic forces that are driving some of that.
Katelyn: How do you think this issue is New York City specific?
Mike: So, you know, it’s interesting, like overall, I think we’re actually average or slightly above average when it comes to teacher retention, which is like the cousin of teacher turnover. And so if you look at like overall in the New York City public school system, it’s usually between like six and 8% of teachers who leave the system of any given year. If you measure it by how many teachers left their school, it’s about like 87% stay. So like 13% leave their school. And we’re actually better than the national average, which is like 16 or 17% leave their school.
Katelyn: So if it’s not cost or, you know, compensation, how do you feel that teacher admin relationship affects teacher turnover, whether or not a teacher wants to stay.
Mike: Yeah, your administration is really the most direct impact on your day to day experience as a teacher, often even more than like the students, in some ways, like when you feel like you don’t have the support or like on the other end, If you feel like your administration is, like, actively toxic, that is gonna really push you out of your job quickly. I was looking at a survey recently from Ed Week, which did a national teacher morale survey, and one of the questions they asked is like, would you know, having a less abusive or toxic administration make you more likely to stay in your job, and teachers in New York were more likely to say yes to that than the national average, right?
Katelyn: So what do you think the role of admin? You know, besides just being a boss, is for teachers,
Mike: It’s really huge. They, they set the culture of the school, and you know, teaching is a really hard job. Like you’re getting challenges from every direction. Like you have students who, you know, maybe have a lot of different needs, like significant behavior challenges. Sometimes you have really challenging situations with parents, and then you have stuff coming down from the district. You have curriculum mandates, you have different policies. And so really good administrator can be someone who, like helps insulate teachers from that pressure. When it’s not a good administrator, they just amplify all that pressure because they’re not dealing with it in some way themselves, and they’re often kind of then taking it out on their teachers. And so it turns an already difficult job into like an impossible job.
Katelyn: Okay, yeah.
Mateo: That was Michael Elsen-Rooney, a reporter from Chalkbeat.
Katelyn: Now, Mateo, let’s talk about your school. Did you know that your school is like famous?
Mateo: Well, I had heard from my dad that my school is well known in more progressive circles in New York City, and that a lot of his friends want to send their kids there because of that, but I didn’t know about it being famous.
Katelyn: Yeah, so pretty much the school founder, Deborah Meier, is a subject of two documentaries. People in the education system seem to really look up to your school in terms of the trust that admin has in their teachers,
Mateo: I feel like I’m taking my school experience for granted then, because my teachers are definitely doing a great job teaching me. But I didn’t know that my school was known for that, so I actually interviewed Candice Ligator, one of the assistant principals at my school, who also teaches an AP seminar class, which I’m taking this year. What role would you say administration at Central Park East has played in your journey as a teacher.
Candice: So before I came into this role, my direct supervisor would do usually, like two to three observations a year. Like those conversations would really help as far as like me growing, encouraging me to like take risks, not teaching always the same way, trying different things that was always something that was encouraged, and I think made me a better teacher over time.
Mateo: So I did some research on teacher satisfaction rates with admin at CPEHS, and I found that the percent of teachers that agreed or strongly agreed, that the principal school leader at their school communicates a clear vision for their school was 97% 100% of teachers agreed, or strongly agreed, that the principal at their school understands how students learn, and 100% of teachers agreed that the principal or school leader at their school carefully tracks student academic program progress, and we made like, a prediction that this plays into the teacher morale at CPEHS. And can you tell me why you think teachers at CPEHS are so happy here.
Candice: Well as someone who’s been in this community 18 years myself, I have worked at other schools, so I sort of know the flip side of things, when you’re not supported, it feels very isolating, and it’s also really challenging, because you’re kind of just on your own to figure things out. I think why people feel so happy or the morale is so good is because we do genuinely try to understand that our teachers are people first. And I think just having, giving people a little bit of grace with things, you know, if emergencies come up, being supportive of teachers and not we never really come for anybody on like, a punitive level. If something is going on, we really try to, like, talk through it. If there are teachers that are having like, problems with students, oftentimes, will volunteer to, like, go into the class, kind of observe and offer suggestions. So I think those are just some of the reasons. But I think just like understanding that people have a lot going on outside of this building, and understanding that every day and how you treat people, I think helps.
Mateo: Okay, and to what extent has the administration, it sounds like AP seminar, so what extent has the administration at Central Park East impacted how much you enjoy teaching?
Candice: So I think you know this, that Ms. Segura was an assistant principal, and now she’s the principal, so prior, majority of my experience here was under a different leadership, a different principal, and I will say, in both scenarios, I love teaching here, because the leadership team really does let teachers have autonomy in the classroom. So as an English teacher, I was able to teach whatever books I wanted. I could structure my curriculum how I wanted, and that level of like, trust and freedom really made it enjoyable for me to teach. I didn’t have to, like, run my curriculum by anybody. I had to submit one, of course, but I didn’t have to get approval. And I think just having that level of freedom one is not something that you get in a lot of New York City public schools, a lot of them will have what’s called, like scripted curriculum where teachers have to teach specific things, whether they like those materials or not. So I think just having that freedom here and Ms. Segura still does allow that. Having the freedom to say, oh, I want to teach this AP class, and being able to bring it in, I think, is also something that has made me want to continue teaching alongside of doing this role.
Mateo: That was Candice Ligator, an assistant principal at CPEHS.
Katelyn: That interview was really interesting. Just to see how much autonomy teachers are given over their lesson plan. They kind of have the ability to, I wouldn’t say, do whatever they want, but figure out what’s right for their subject, because at the end of the day, like they went to school for this, they know
Mateo: So teacher turnover has really affected you personally then,
Katelyn: Yeah, I feel like at its core, at the end of the day, it hurts to see teachers leave, especially at a small school like yours and mine, teachers become your family. I always think about this one time I was coming back from a trip in school in from DC, and a teacher approached my dad. He was like, Oh, thank you so much for raising such a good kid, XYZ, whatever. And my dad flipped it back on him. He was like, No, thank you, because you see Katelyn more than I do. You see her every day. You are her family. And that hit me right in my heart, yeah, you know. And as you start to see teachers leave, you kind of internalize that. You think, why are they leaving? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with us, you know, but then I kind of realized I have to stop thinking about it in that way. And at the end of the day, I realized I’ll never blame a teacher for leaving. I’ll feel sad about it, but I’ll never be mad, because if you’re in a place where you don’t feel like you’re being served, then you should go somewhere where you feel like you are being served and you feel like your efforts are truly being highlighted.
Mateo: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s like really understandable why these teachers are leaving, and I guess something pretty clear to us is that teachers should be given more freedom and autonomy. So admin needs to do better for the sake of our teachers and us students.
Katelyn: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation, the Summerfield Foundation and FJC.
Mateo: Producers for this episode were me, Mateo Tang O’Reilly
Katelyn: And me, Katelyn Melville, with reporting help from Chalkbeat reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney,
Mateo: Our executive producer for this show is Ave Carrillo and executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.
Katelyn: Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina Quesany and our friends at Chalkbeat. Our engagement editor is Carolina Hidalgo.
Mateo: This episode was made using Hindenburg Pro. Music is from the Blue Dot Sessions and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang.
Katelyn: And special thanks to our mentor Alina Kulman who is awesome and helped us with this story.
We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.
