MECKLENBURG COUNTY, N.C. — Almost two months into the school year, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district still has more than 500 teaching positions that need to be filled.
This number is higher than at the beginning of the school year. Large vacancies throughout the school year are starting to become a norm for the district, and other similar-sized districts.
The 500 vacancies represent about 5% of its total full-time teaching staff.
CMS' hardest-to-fill positions include teachers for exceptional children, secondary math, science, English language arts, and multi-language learner teachers.
The district currently has sign-on bonuses available for these positions that range from $2,500 to $5,000.
Although the district is short more than 500 teachers, classes aren’t without a teacher, in many instances, guest teachers are filling the roles.
Emily Iten, a guest teacher at Croft Community School, is working toward a degree to merge from guest teacher to full-time.
"I had a lot of students last year at Ballantyne that came into my class... that didn't, they didn't speak English," Iten said. "So that really, really inspired me to want to do that, and help them and work with them."
Iten is working on a master’s degree at Western Governors University to learn to teach English as a second language. According to the district, more than 28% of CMS students come from homes where English is not their first language.
The need for teachers like Iten is large, especially with families being displaced during ongoing conflicts and wars.
"I actually had a lot of students last year come in around January, actually all at once, come from Ukraine, from Russia," Iten said.
Many are asking why there are not more people like her going to school to teach.
"We are not seeing the teachers that are traditionally trained, come out of schools and ready to teach," Robert Ellyson, the district's executive director of recruitment and retention, said at a CMS job fair. "So that pipeline is becoming smaller and smaller."
North Carolina’s educator prep program enrollment fell by 42% last year. Education prep programs include school residency programs, statewide colleges of education, and for-profit teacher preparation programs.
North Carolina tallies the number of teacher vacancies in each district on the first day of school and the 40th day of school. The annual State of the Teaching Profession report showed a steep increase in teacher vacancies at CMS over the past five years.
In the first two years before the pandemic, the vacancy rate was between 1% and 1.4% In the two years following the start of the pandemic, the vacancy rate went up to 4%.
When compared to Wake County Schools, the largest school district in the state, CMS had a lower vacancy rate after the pandemic. In the first two years before the pandemic, the vacancy rate for Wake was between 0.8% and 0.9% In the two years following the start of the pandemic the vacancy rate went up to 6.2%.
CMS' next job fair is on Nov. 16.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.