As the 2025-26 academic year begins, North Carolina’s local public schools are reporting encouraging signs in staff recruitment and retention. Vacancies across multiple positions – including teachers, classified staff, bus drivers, administrators, and central office staff – continue to decline overall. While the trend has not been entirely linear, the steady decrease since the 2021–22 school year reflects the ongoing efforts of school and district leaders to make education a more attractive and sustainable career path.
Results from a survey conducted by the North Carolina School Superintendents’ Association (NCSSA) from mid-August through early-September of all 115 school districts revealed a total of 6,209.5 total staff vacancies, reflecting a steady decrease compared to last year’s 8,335 vacancies and 9,767 vacancies in 2023.
In comparison to where local public schools were at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, K-12 teaching vacancies have decreased by approximately one-third, bus driver vacancies have decreased by 7%, and central office vacancies have decreased by 42%. Additionally, school counselors, psychologists, and social workers vacancies seem to be leveling off, as the rate has only decreased by 4.4%, compared to a 20% decrease from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 school years.
In a recent NCASA Public School Matters podcast, Jack Hoke, Executive Director of NCSSA, explained how the sunsetting of the federal COVID relief funds impacted vacancy numbers. “Many districts used those additional funds to add positions that provided much-needed academic and non-academic support for students. This meant that the overall number of positions on district payroll increased over the past few years. That funding went away in 2024, and without it, districts have not been able to continue to fund many of these positions. With fewer overall positions in school districts, and staff that had previously held those support positions now filling positions where there may have otherwise been a vacancy, it makes sense that there would be fewer vacancies statewide.”
At an individual district level, 71 districts have fewer vacancies than they did at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year; 5 districts have the same number of vacancies as the beginning of the 2024-25 school year; 39 districts have more vacancies than they did at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year; and fewer districts reported zero or 1 vacancies compared to this point in the 2024-25 school year (4 and 12 respectively).
Hoke commented on the challenges superintendents and school districts face in recruiting and retaining teachers and staff, emphasizing that the main factor driving these vacancy trends is compensation. “Education remains an under-compensated, under-resourced, and under-appreciated field,” he said. “Research tells us that the ‘teacher pay penalty’ remains a significant issue – teachers make less than professionals in other fields with comparable levels of education and experience.”
Budget delays have further complicated the issue, according to Hoke. Despite broad support for larger teacher raises, the North Carolina House and Senate remain at odds over the tax package that funds state spending, including the amount to support needed pay increases for teachers and other school staff. Meanwhile, cost increases for their State Health Plan coverage will negatively impact them beginning Jan. 1, 2026.
“Championing public education isn’t political – it’s personal.” Hoke said, “Nearly everyone in North Carolina has a connection to a public school. It’s time we treat the health of our schools with the same urgency and care we would for our own families.”