North Carolina teacher vacancies soar by more than 50% in new state report
The number of teaching vacancies has risen in North Carolina’s public schools by more than 50% — stretching the ability of schools to educate their students.
A new report released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Instruction shows that there were 5,540.36 instructional vacancies on the first day of this school year — a 46% increase from the same time in the 2020-21 school year.
Schools were still struggling to fill vacant positions two months into the school year, with 5,091.46 vacancies on the 40th day of classes. That’s a 58% increase over the same time in the 2020-21 school year and a 200% increase from the 2018-19 school year.
Tom Tomberlin, DPI’s senior Director of Educator Preparation, Licensure, and Performance, said a large part of the increase comes from now counting as vacancies positions held by people who have emergency and provisional licenses.
“The vacancy rates tells us to what extent the districts are filling the positions with permanent placements and anything temporary is being counted as a vacancy,” Tomberlin told the State Board of Education.
Vacancies by subject
By far the largest number of vacancies reported were in elementary schools for the core subjects of math, English language arts, science and social studies. They accounted for 1,223.74 vacancies.
The next highest category was for elementary school special education teachers with 444.25.
Two districts with troubled histories have the highest vacancy rates in the state.
Halifax County Schools had a highest vacancy rate at 24.35%, followed by Hoke County at 22.66%.
Hoke County is where the lead original plaintiff in the Leandro school funding case from as part of an effort to increase state funding for public schools. During the long-running Leandro case, the state briefly took over running Halifax County schools.
State board vice chairman Alan Duncan said that DPI has to concede that there’s been some change in the vacancy rates.
“There has been some sense generally that the teaching profession has not been as attractive to some of the great candidates that t historically has been in more recent years,” Duncan said.
Teacher attrition drops
One source of good news is that among the remaining 93,832 teachers, the teacher attrition rate declined. The percentage of teachers who resigned or retired last year dropped to 7.78% compared to 8.2% the previous year.
The teacher mobility rate — showing how many educators changed schools — went up slightly to 3.31% from 3.24% the previous year.
The teacher turnover data is a year old, covering the period from March 2021 to March 2022.
State Superintendent Catherine Truitt says the attrition data shows to her that things are stabilizing post-pandemic.
“It’s a positive sign that last year’s attrition rate for the state was about on par with what it was before the pandemic,” Truitt said in a news release. “It indicates that things are stabilizing following a tremendous period of uncertainty in the 2020-21 school year.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2023 at 10:02 AM with the headline "North Carolina teacher vacancies soar by more than 50% in new state report."
