Why did the teacher shortage take this long to arrive?

Here is the lead from a Washington Post story on the meltdown in finding enough teachers for K-12 public schools:

Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

The teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels — and school officials everywhere are scrambling to ensure that, as students return to classrooms, someone will be there to educate them.

One thought here is about the structure of the writing in that first graf, with the three examples from varied places in the country (though all are currently dominated politically by radical Republicans). The promise is that each of those three examples (plus more) will be explained in more detail later in the piece.

The second graf functions as the "explainer" that shows readers why this story is being run right now, while also highlighting the importance of the situation. Some would call this the "nut graf," or the kernel of information that prompted the reporting which follows.

A second thought is that the teacher shortage is a direct result of right wing Americans and wacky left winger Americans to disparage teaching and teachers for many years. The culture wars and angry politics have combined to drive many teachers out of the profession while warning potential replacements that they are looking at a hazy future.

There are only so many people willing to take on a poorly paid job, with kids who are having trouble readjusting to life post-pandemic and parents who tend to think they know MORE than the teachers. After all, they went to school, and that makes them experts.

The nation has always had a streak of anti-intellectualism, but now one political party seems intent on crippling our public school system. "How dare those uppity educators try to teach MY kids to think logically?"

No one trusts anyone at this point in American life, and institutions are fair game for everyone to doubt and criticize and torment. 

It's a minor miracle that the public schools have survived all the turmoil, I suppose. Educated Americans tend to reject backwards thinking Republican ideas, so to win elections a logical strategy is to weaken public education and create more ignorant potential voters.

The less education people have, at least among whites, the more rabid people are for Trump and the cult.