Panther Valley School District’s board of directors approved several teacher resignations Wednesday night and the departures have one remaining employee concerned about future retention efforts.

Joe Steber, a Panther Valley Junior Senior High School teacher, asked the board for “swift action” as more and more of his colleagues look for work elsewhere.

“There needs to be action now because there are major problems,” Steber said. “Teachers are starting to look to leave and we’re talking about veteran teachers who have been here quite a while. We’re under siege right now as other districts look to take our teachers and we’re going to have a hard time filling those spots, one because of our pay and two because of the nationwide teacher shortage.”

Panther Valley accepted the resignations of Courtney Delazio, a junior senior high school math teacher, Stephanie Sosnoski, an elementary teacher, and Rachel Hain, a learning support teacher. It also set official resignation dates for a handful of other employees including Brittany Hill, Meghan Patrole, Dana Henninger-Ayers and Sheila McArdle.

Violence, Steber said, is an issue at Panther Valley and it’s growing worse as time goes on.

“We have already had a teacher bitten and at Friday night’s football game there was a 3-on-1 fight,” Steber said. “When I have a seventh grader in my classroom that comes to me as I’m about to go down to lunch duty and tells me she’s afraid because a student threatened to drag her across the cafeteria floor, that breaks my heart. That’s a lot. These are seventh graders.”

Director Keith Krapf said there “isn’t a day that goes by” that the board isn’t working toward resolutions on the issues raised by Steber.

“We will throw money at different ways to curb this issue,” Krapf said. “We all agree with you 110%. If something doesn’t change it’s going to get worse.”

Delazio, one of the teachers who had her resignation accepted Wednesday, was a 15-year teacher, Steber said. Replacing her, he added, will be no easy task.

“Even a school like Hazleton that pays very well is struggling to hire teachers,” Steber said. “I know because my wife teaches there and I’ve seen the open jobs repeatedly. They had a hard time filling her math position and guess who filled it; Courtney Delazio.”

Superintendent Dave McAndrew said the administration is going to be meeting with some of Panther Valley’s teachers in the near future.

“We’d like to solve this together,” Steber said. “I know I don’t want to leave Panther Valley, but a lot of my friends are leaving and time is of the essence.”