More than 500 Arizona public school teachers either abandoned their classrooms or quit by the end of the first month of the school year, according to a report issued Tuesday.

The Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association says 147 teachers just flat out stopped showing up in the early weeks of the school year.

Another 379 teachers resigned by week four.

The report, based on a survey of 135 school districts and charter schools, says the state is still short 1,328 teachers this year.

Another 2,491 classrooms are filled by people who weren’t trained as teachers – the result of a program approved by Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature.

Translation: nearly 53 percent of classroom vacancies this year have either not been filled or they were filled with people who don’t meet standard teaching requirements.

ROBERTS:Arizona ranks as worst state to be a teacher

Add one more gone. Today, I heard from a teacher who is quitting on Friday. Here's part of what he said:

"I am another data point in the count of teachers leaving their job – a guy who this year wanted to make a difference at my local high school. But the emotional and physical stress of 9 weeks of 70 hours per week broke my spirit," he wrote.

"I'm a hard worker with a successful track record of 30+ years of engineering, manufacturing and science research. I've had stressful assignments at remote locations, deadlines, stopped manufacturing lines, teams to lead that I never before met. I knew and was prepared to work hard at my newly-chosen profession. But before TUSD, I never had a job that made me break down in tears."

I'll have more on his story later.

Teachers' Academy is better than nothing

Meanwhile, Ducey on Tuesday launched his tuition-waiver plan to address the state’s crying need for teachers. He’s offering select students a free university education provided they agree to teach for four years at an Arizona public school.

Ducey proposed the Arizona Teachers’ Academy earlier this year in his State of the State speech.

I suppose if you can’t – or won’t – give a real pay raise to teachers …

… and you can’t – or won’t – spend more time concocting ways to improve and support public schools than you do concocting ways to drain them of money …

Well, then a tuition waiver is better than nothing.

RELATED:Why are Arizona teachers leaving in droves?

The Arizona Teachers’ Academy will offer tuition waivers this year to 236 students at the state’s three universities.

While Ducey’s training academy is a good idea, it needs some work if it’s going to do anything more than serve a bullet point on his re-election brochure.

Ducey’s program forgives a year of tuition for every year a teacher logs in a public school classroom. So, teach four years and your schooling is free.

How do we keep teachers in classrooms?

Just in time to flee the classroom, if you follow trend.

According to a report issued this spring by the Morrison Institute, 42 percent of Arizona teachers hired in 2013 quit by 2016. Among charter school teachers, it was 50 percent.

The study concluded that teachers are leaving for a variety of reasons. Chief among them? A heavy workload, low pay and a belief that they aren’t supported.

In other words, those teachers have a pretty good grip on our priorities in Arizona.

If we want our classrooms filled with qualified teachers who stick around long enough to become master teachers, then we’re going to have to do better.

We’re going to have to demand better from our Legislature and our governor.

We’re going to have to – now don’t faint, Gov. Ducey – make an investment in public education.

Tuition waivers for 236 students is a good start.

That is, until 526 teachers don’t even last a month.

And 1,328 classrooms are posted with help-wanted signs as we enter October.

MORE FROM ROBERTS:

Teachers are fed up? In Arizona? You don't say

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Doug Ducey's 'education budget' is a disappointment