The number of new in-state teacher certifications in Pennsylvania last school year was 4,220 – an all-time low.That number was higher than 16,000 a decade ago.It has some asking what can be done to help address a growing workforce shortage.The downward trend for newly certified teachers in Pennsylvania is nothing new, but it means districts have to be more competitive when it comes to making sure there are enough teachers for every classroom."I absolutely love my job. I wake up so happy to come here every day," teacher Bailey Stone said.Stone teaches first-grade students at Sporting Hill Elementary in the Cumberland Valley School District."My mom is a teacher, so I kind of grew up around education," she said.But Stone said it's not easy to be a teacher or become one."That's a challenge. It's a really rigorous program. You have to take lots of extra testing that other majors don't have to do. And then during student teaching, as we all know, it's an unpaid time," she said.Pennsylvania's teachers union is pushing for a $60,000 minimum salary for teachers and new scholarship programs to lessen student loan debt."I think that could be almost as valuable as looking at the salary," Superintendent David Christopher said.Christopher said there's a smaller pool of qualified teaching candidates, and those candidates are looking both in and out of Pennsylvania for jobs."High school science, special education, some of those areas are very difficult to fill for everybody," he said.Christopher also believes there needs to be a toning down of the rhetoric that surrounds teachers and education as a profession, saying an attitude change could help more teachers stay in the profession.