More than 60% of the teachers surveyed by the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, believe that the issues they face have gotten worse over the past two years, with nearly 100% reporting that stress and burnout are their top concerns.
The “2025 Back to School Survey” showed that teachers are concerned about a variety of issues, including student behavior (90%), student mental health issues (89%), and having too little time to prepare, collaborate and plan (89%).
Teachers also anticipate major challenges due to towns cutting school budgets and shortages of teachers and staff.
“The problems in our schools are growing more severe, and teachers’ calls for action are being ignored, leaving students to pay the price,” said CEA President Kate Dias. “Our educators are underpaid, disrespected, and stretched beyond their limits – and many are being driven out of the profession in search of careers that value their work, pay them fairly, and treat them with dignity – leaving many classrooms without certified educators to teach our children.”
CEA officials say the survey includes responses from nearly 1,000 educators in public school systems and that nearly 60% have been teachers for more than 20 years. Teachers from all over the state answered the questions.
According to the survey, 72 percent of special education teachers and 89 percent of teachers in urban districts expressed dissatisfaction, with 66% and 76% of those groups, respectively, reporting that things have gotten worse.
CEA Vice President Joslyn DeLancey said a community approach is needed to help support teachers and staff.
“When we look at Connecticut as a state, there’s a lot of lip service toward teachers and teaching and learning in the state, and there’s not a lot of action when it comes to actionable things that we could be doing to improve conditions for our teachers and our students, to be quite honest,” DeLancey said.
DeLancey said teachers’ voices need to be heard on the issues of special education and curriculum planning time. Administrators could help support teachers by helping to work with dysregulated students, she added.
“There are a lot of spaces where we could say our jobs should not be as stressful and hard as they are,” DeLancey said.
DeLancey said the next step would be to seek support from local school boards, which make policy on decisionmaking and hire superintendents.
“It goes on to our town councils and boards of finance that actually vote on our school budgets and have control over how much spending actually goes in,” she added.
DeLancey said boards of education may put forward a budget that the town’s finance committee sends back for further cuts, which can impact class sizes and other support for students.
“I think it’s really important for everybody to understand that our educators want to be providing the best possible situation for teaching and learning for their students,” DeLancey said. “And we need the support of all of our education stakeholders to ensure that we can do that well, without the extra additional stress and burnout that has been put on us, whether it’s by weird accountability measures or top-down initiatives or mandates that don’t include the voices of the people who are impacted by them.”