COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina is facing a teacher shortage crisis.
It's something we've known for the past few years but SC for Ed backed it up with numbers.
“When one teacher leaves and can’t be replaced by somebody, it’s a huge impact," said Steve Nuzum, the director of research for SC for Ed. Nuzum and teacher volunteers found a shocking number of teacher vacancies across the state in public schools while doing their bi-weekly research.
“I think most of us through common sense know that there’s a problem with retention but it’s nice to quantify it a little bit," Nuzum said.
And that quantified number is over 2,000 teacher vacancies across the state.
“We know that the numbers that are posted on those district websites are not always up to the minute accurate, but for us, the bigger picture of, like, how - especially that state-wide number - the fact that it’s more this summer than it's ever been in any week that we’ve ever done in the past three years is kind of the big takeaway to me” Nuzum added.
According to SC for Ed’s research, Richland One has the most vacancies with 250 open positions. Charleston is close behind at 217.
“We definitely want to know why that is," Nuzum said. "We definitely want to be able to suggest ways to fix that problem because, when we don’t have enough teachers and other people like support staff in the building, not only is the educational process going to be hurt but, like, we saw this year, it becomes a real safety issue, too.”
And what are those ways to help fix the problem?
“They mostly involve, aside from money which is important, they mostly involve teacher autonomy and showing respect for the profession,” Nuzum said.
News19 has reached out to Richland One to further confirm this number of vacancies, as it is the most in the state. A spokesperson told us, "We currently have 174 teacher vacancies, not 250." They say the number is so high because "we value smaller class sizes in Richland One, we increase teacher allocations to our schools and that increases the number of vacancies"
We’ve also reached out to Governor Henry McMaster's office about this alarming vacancy number and have not yet heard back.
If you're looking to apply to one of these districts, here are the links: