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The ASHA Leader and LSHSS have recently featured articles on the issues of public school SLP recruitment, retention, and salaries. Recently retired, I have experienced first-hand the loss of favorable working conditions, due to increases in student population, severity of communication needs, IEP requirements (paperwork), and local budget constraints; each reduced my availability for inclusion, collaboration, curriculum development, regular education initiatives, and offering professional development. More regrettably, student progress slowed. Eventually, professional ideals, a fair salary, esteemed colleagues, and beloved students could not compensate for the stress and overwork caused by an under-funded educational system, legal mandates, and an expanding scope of practice.
Our profession has suffered a loss of scholarship and research leadership and failed to protect our professional identity from encroachment by other professions. We have fought for legal mandates without the human and the financial capital to sustain them. How do we justify the financial, educational, and personal investment in a profession that delivers modest wages, overwork, constant shifts in scope of practice, significant liability and an impressive attrition rate for beginning SLPs? (Edgar and Rosa-Lugo, LSHSS, 2007, 38, 31-46)
If by some stroke of magic all the current SLP school positions were filled, the profession would still struggle with issues of recruitment, retention, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Is the SLP in the public school setting going the way of the doctoral SLP in the college setting? Is our profession a once-brilliant star that, having expanded beyond its capacity, is now heading for extinction?
Christine McGrath
Litchfield, Connecticut
chrstn_mcgrth@yahoo.com
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