In recent years, North Carolina public schools have been plagued with difficulty fully staffing their classrooms. In response to this trend, the North Carolina Association of School Superintendents started to ask districts how many vacancies they had on their first day of school.
WUNC's Education Reporter Liz Schlemmer discussed this year's survey with the Association's Executive Director Jack Hoke.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Liz Schlemmer: For several years in August, you've been surveying your members — superintendents across the state — for their vacancies. When did you start doing this and why?
Jack Hoke: We started right after COVID, and there [were] issues hiring math teachers, science teachers, and exceptional children's teachers, and then they started talking about vacancies in the middle school, and then when it got to elementary school vacancies, that was kind of alarming.
What were the results this year, and how does it compare to recent years?
What we saw this year comparing where we were last year, the number of vacancies in K-12 teaching positions have decreased by approximately one-third. Bus driver vacancies have decreased by 7%. Central office vacancies have decreased by 42%. Counselors, psychologists, and social workers, those categories have decreased by 4.4% compared to the previous year.
Overall, that sounds really good. Can you explain how schools have reduced their vacancies? What's the context? And why might it not be so spectacular as it sounds?
One thing that occurred when the federal [government] provided COVID relief money in 2020, districts had been able to add a lot of positions to help with students during those times when it was real challenging…and that money went away in 2024 so districts have not been able to keep those positions.
So some of those folks who lost jobs might have been hired to fill other vacancies?
Very well could have, because when those positions ended, they could have gotten another vacancy. And again, that helped reduce the vacancy rate in my opinion.
Is that pretty universally true across the state, that districts have cut positions, or is it only in certain places?
I think that's pretty universal across the state, because those COVID funds were in every district in the state, and that has gone away. So that's universal.
I do want to caution our readers that your survey isn't the same as the official vacancy data that school districts are required to report to the state. How good was the response rate on your survey this year?
We had a great response rate. We had 115 districts, which is 100% response rate, and it was effective the first day of their school year.
What do you hope to see in future data, and what are superintendents telling you that it would take to see real improvements in staffing?
Well, obviously, we want to continue to see the vacancy rate get to zero at some point. But again, that's going to be incremental, because the teacher pipeline is such a challenge at the university system.
So the vacancies are down, but there are still vacancies?
Absolutely, yeah. And it's still, for example, in K-5 581, in high school 495, that's still alarming. You spread it out over the state's not bad, but if your child doesn't have a teacher, that's a real issue.
To me, we can't recruit our way out of this. We also have to retain the teachers that we have, and we've got to look at making this a sustainable profession. We need to look at compensation, competitive compensation, much better working conditions and respect for teachers and staff, and getting a state budget approved that has significant increases for our teachers would certainly make a difference.
