Teaching Vacancies in North Carolina

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic hit educators and educational institutions hard, specifically as it slowed the pace of students’ learning, resulting in lower test scores. According to a newly released state report, North Carolina’s public-school systems saw a 58.4% increase in vacant teaching positions this fall. Vacancies topped 5,000 teachers, comprising more than 5% of all teachers. The state report also reports fewer students enrolled in the state’s fifteen public colleges of education. Turquoise Parker teaches at Durham Elementary School and loves seeing her students. Parker is in her twelfth-year teaching and says: “There are lots of beautiful parts of being in education but there are some parts that make folks walk away. Listening to rank-and-file folks who are in positions of power, you don’t and can’t know what to do to transform our schools unless you listen to people.” Hopefully, this problem will be extinguished, as North Carolina Association of Educators President Tamika Walker Kelly put it best: “We fear that one day a student will walk into a classroom and there won’t be a high-quality teacher there to instruct them on their academic journey.”