Stephanie Wujek grew up a small town girl with dreams of becoming a teacher in a small town school. Wujek, 24, got her wish after graduating with a biology degree from the University of Northern Colorado.

She now teaches science and coaches track in tiny Wiggins Middle School in Morgan County on the plains northeast of Denver. She’s lucky. Wujeck has a supportive principal and has mentors who help her create lesson plans and share tips to gain traction in her classroom.

“This has worked out well for me,” said Wujek, who attended high school in Windsor. “I’ve always been drawn to the rural side of life. I knew I could connect with students better in this atmosphere. And I think you can give them more attention in a smaller school setting.”

Wujek is an exception in a state desperate for teachers, especially for science and math teachers in the state’s smallest school districts. Principals, administrators and state school officials say some math, science and special-education slots go unfilled for years.

The state’s teacher shortage, which mirrors a national trend, grows larger each year. As many as 3,000 new teachers are needed to fill existing slots in Colorado classrooms while the number of graduates from teacher-preparation programs in the state has declined by 24.4 percent over the past five years.

Meanwhile, enrollment in the state’s teacher preparation programs in 2015-16 remained flat from the previous academic year with 9,896 students. On top of that, at least a third of the teachers in Colorado are 55 or older, and closing in on retirement.

Plenty of factors — low salaries, a culture obsessed with student testing, the social isolation that comes with teaching in small towns — send students scrambling from teaching careers, say experts.

There is also a pall that hangs over teaching that hasn’t existed in the past, said Mike Merrifield, a 30-year teaching veteran and now a state senator.

“Teachers are constantly being bashed,” Merrifield said. “It’s not the same job it used to be.”

Colorado officials vow to help. A bill in the state legislature would require state agencies and school districts to identify the reasons behind teacher shortages and retention problems.

Urban school districts are slightly more immune to the downward trend than rural districts. The highest average salary for K-12 teachers in Colorado is $63,000 in Boulder Valley. At Colorado’s rural schools, the average teacher salary is about $22,700 — $14,000 less than the state average for teachers.

Metro areas can offer teachers higher salaries, greater housing options and more opportunities to teach specialized classes. But the secluded nature of rural schools may be the biggest drawback for many new teachers.

“Attracting people to a rural community where they have no community ties is difficult,” said Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association. “If you get your teaching license and we send them to Monte Vista, it’s going to be awfully tough to keep them in Monte Vista.”

Mark Payler, superintendent of Custer County schools in south central Colorado, sees plenty of good, young teachers flee his district because of loneliness.

“There are not a lot of young people in our community,” Payler said of Westcliffe and the small neighboring towns at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. “There is no Starbucks. There is no place to congregate. One woman told me, ‘There is just so much hiking I can do by myself.’ ”

Wujek helped fill a teaching gap when she moved to Wiggins, a town of about 900. She teaches biology and other physical science classes even though she took only two physics classes in college. She completed extra physics courses after graduation to help her juggle her new teaching load.

Still, a teaching shortage remains at the small district. Another teacher’s retirement has left Wiggins High School in need of a math teacher, and despite two months of advertising, no one has applied for the job.

Some districts say teacher positions have gone unfilled for a year or more. The 132-student Revere School District went a full year without a music teacher. The 209-student La Veta School District was short a math teacher for more than 18 months. The Genoa-Hugo School District tried but couldn’t hire a qualified teacher after the business teacher quit more than a year ago. The district trimmed its business program, and now English and agriculture teachers lead the few remaining business classes.

“This is as pure a crisis as we have in this state,” said Payler, of Custer County schools, which serves 360 students. “There is no pool of teachers anymore, the candidates for jobs just aren’t there.”

A recent nationwide search for an industrial arts teacher yielded three applicants for Payler and only one was certified to teach.

“We advertise, we push out our job openings nationwide, and we are not seeing any apply,” Payler said.

As a result, classes are cut or pared down while districts scramble for qualified substitutes and instructional coaches to fill the gaps. Many, like in Wiggins, also rely on retired teachers who come back to help.

“We make it work,” said Wiggins High principal Trent Kerr. “Fortunately, we’ve got teachers who have retired but are willing to come back and be mentors and help out where they can.”

The biggest hurdle in hiring is teacher salaries, which have fallen 7.7 percent in the past decade in Colorado, according to the National Education Association. Colorado was one of 35 states that saw real declines in average teacher salaries, when adjusted for inflation, according to the NEA.

School districts that offer starting salaries in the low-to-mid $20,000s can’t compete with other industries or even larger districts. Especially when those low-paying jobs can’t help new teachers make much of a dent in their student-loan debt.

“A lot of math and science majors coming out of school are going into jobs like accounting, business and engineering because teaching doesn’t pay off for them,” said Kerr. Even Kerr’s own son, a sixth-grader, understands the economics of it all.

“I asked him if he will go into education, and he looked at me and said, ‘C’mon Dad. There is no money in education.’ ”

A fellow superintendent recently told Payler that starting annual salaries at her district have been frozen at $24,000 for seven years. “Those are starvation wages,” Payler said.

Dana Kettlewell got into teaching to encourage kids to pursue music. But Kettlewell, the band director at University Schools in Greeley, said she considered quitting this year because of concerns about money.

“I couldn’t visualize how I would start my family, pay off my car repair, pay off student loans, and enjoy life on my and my husband’s teacher salary,” said Kettlewell, who is in her sixth year teaching. “Teachers don’t make a reasonable salary until they have a master’s degree and have been working as a teacher in the same district for 10 years.”

There are other factors at work, especially in rural areas, that make attracting and keeping teachers harder than ever, say experts. Teachers in rural areas must accept social isolation, a lack of affordable or convenient housing, and a dearth of mentors.

There is also a lingering malaise infecting teaching, once a noble pursuit but now being bashed for producing low student scores on standardized tests, said Rob Reinsvold, associate professor biology at the University of Northern Colorado. Reinsvold is also a member of the school’s teacher-preparation program.

To better understand the problem, UNC has created the Center for Rural Education, which will be led by faculty from the university’s School of Teacher Education and School of Special Education. The center is using a $2.2 million grant from the Colorado Department of Higher Education to build a self-sustaining pipeline of new rural teachers.

The center, which is in its formative phase, will develop and expand teacher cadet academies in rural schools to encourage students to choose careers in education. Those students could take teacher education classes and earn high school and college credit.

The center will also give one-time $2,800 stipends to student teachers who are placed in rural Colorado schools. Another one-time $6,000 stipend will be given to teachers in rural school districts who commit to complete an 18-credit-hour program in high-need areas such as math, science and special education.

In addition, ongoing mentoring and professional development will be provided to first-year teachers while professional development courses will be offered to help retain veteran teachers, said Harvey Rude, who is serving as the center’s coördinator until a full-time director is hired.

“After all, this is UNC’s primary mission,” Rude said. “And that’s to provide help to teachers and support them as they grow professionally. This is something we can do now systemically to get and keep teachers in rural areas.”

House Bill 1003 mirrors UNC’s efforts. Introduced by Rep. Barbara McLachlan, the measure requires the Department of Higher Education — in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Education, school districts and other education groups — to study teacher shortages in Colorado and recommend ways to stop the teacher drain.

“We know the teacher shortage in Colorado has reached a crisis mode, so this bill creates the framework to do something about it and bring more teachers to our classrooms,” McLachlan said.

She’s also co-sponsoring House Bill 1176, which would allow rural school districts to hire an unlimited number of retired teachers who would be able to collect their entire pensions while working. The bill would ease current restrictions on retired teachers who re-enter the classroom and who must forfeit a portion of their pension if they work more than 110 days. In some cases, the restrictions begin at 140 days.

McLachlan, a Durango Democrat and former teacher, said both of her bills are attempts to tackle a complex problem rooted in a lack of funding. “Many are afraid the solution is money, so they don’t want to address it,” she said. “The problem might also be at the college level: We’re not graduating enough teachers to fit the needs of our schools.”

To help recruit teachers, some rural school districts offer to forgive student loans, pay for continuing education and offer low-income housing. The Primero School District offers housing near the school for $300 a month.

Districts emphasize the cozy atmosphere of teaching in a small town. “We sell the positive atmosphere of the small school environment,” said Tommy Klausner, the principal of the 105-student Hi-Plains School District. “You get to connect with the kids. You have five kids to a classroom, you get to know these kids from kindergarten to senior year. You get to see them grow.”

The Custer County School District is attacking a lack of affordable housing in the area by converting a district-owned property into a four-apartment complex for teachers, Payler said.

Students from the high school’s building-trades class will help gut and remodel the building. The one-bedroom units will go for about $575 a month, a rent in tune for a starting teacher who makes less than $30,000 a year, said Payler.

One of the district’s current teachers has already put in a bid for one of the apartments, Payler said. “She’s a young teacher from Westcliffe who lives with her parents,” he said. “She is looking forward to finally having a place all her own.”