If you just graduated with a teaching credential, it might be hard to find a job this school year.
If you are a freshman, keep at it because you will be needed by the time you get out of school.

The teacher shortage that once had school districts in San Bernardino County and throughout the nation scrambling to find enough instructors has temporarily eased significantly as the economy has cooled, according to groups that track education employment.

The American Association for Employment in Education said preliminary results of its annual survey of hiring patterns indicate that demand for teachers has fallen for the second straight year and is at its lowest level since 1998.

The group's executive director, B.J. Bryant, said the soft economy has meant more people willing to work for a teacher's pay, and fewer jobs to go around. Instructors in a few subjects do remain tough to find most notably math, bilingual education and all areas of science and special education, Bryant said.

"Last year, we measured 10 or 12 fields as having a considerable shortage,' Bryant said. "This year, there are three.'

In California, budget shortfalls have led to more than 3,800 teacher layoffs this summer, according to the California Teachers Association. Human resource directors at local school districts said they have received more applications from fully qualified teachers then ever before.

This is the first year the Ontario-Montclair School District does not have any emergency credentialed teachers working in the district, said Jill Hammond, director of certified personnel.

During the past three years, the district has gone from about 212 teachers with emergency credentials to about 50 last year. Going into next Tuesday's start of the school year, they don't have any.

"Because we had 212 teachers with emergency credentials we were audited last May,' Hammond said. "The state reviewed our hiring practices and recruitment process. But we were already going in the right direction, and the principals of the schools have worked really hard, and our department has also worked really hard to get as many qualified candidates as possible to choose from.'

The Ontario-Montclair district still has about six openings in math and the sciences, Hammond said Tuesday. But she has been interviewing candidates for the past few weeks and is confident the positions all will be filled when school starts.

In San Bernardino County, the only areas where there are still teachers with emergency credentials are in the high-need areas special education, math, science and bilingual education, said Linda Gubman, director of the Teacher Recruitment Center for San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo and Mono counties.

There are six such centers throughout California, all aimed at putting fully credentialed teachers in classrooms and making it easier for districts to find those teachers.

In January 2001, the four-county area had 4,326 teachers with emergency credentials; while as of Jan. 1, there were 2,752 teachers with emergency credentials. Gubman said today there are even fewer.

In San Bernardino County, less than 10 percent of teachers have emergency credentials, and most of them are in the high-need areas.

Questions remain, though, about how much the shortage really has eased, or for how long.

New federal regulations require a "highly qualified' teacher be in every classroom in core subjects by 2005, meaning the instructor must be certified or licensed, hold a bachelor's degree and demonstrate competence in the subject they teach.

The U.S. Department of Education said in July that nearly half the nation's middle- and high-school teachers don't meet those standards now. A study this year by the Texas A&M Institute for School-University Partnerships said 23 percent of the new teachers hired in Texas for the 2002-2003 school year were not fully certified in their subjects.

It is not clear yet whether schools will be able to get enough teachers certified to fulfill the law's requirements, Bryant said.

"There may be enough bodies to fill classrooms, but will they meet the new quality mandates?' Bryant said.

Additionally, some worry the shortages will return if the economy recovers. Baby boomers, now delaying retirement until their stock portfolios recover, might be more eager to finish their careers. A recovery of the job market also might prompt teachers to leave the classroom for professions with higher pay a chronic problem in the 1990s.

"When everyone is losing their jobs, they say, 'Well, I'll go teach.' But what happens when the economy turns around? Does that mean they go back to their old jobs?' said Richelle Patterson of the American Federation of Teachers.

Gubman agrees and said the average age of teachers in the four-county area is 48 years old.

"There are going to be a lot of people retiring in the next three to five years,' she said. "We just talked about this situation at the last superintendent meeting, and we have to be prepared for another shortage in another few years. We have to have a new crop of credentialed teachers ready to take their places.'