COLUMBIA, S.C. — Districts across the Midlands are reporting fewer teacher vacancies this year compared to last year nearly two months into this school year.
News 19 reached out to 15 school districts in central South Carolina, and heard back from 12 of them. All but one reported fewer vacancies now than they had at this point last year.
Districts report fewer vacancies, with many of those vacancies being in special education classrooms
Across the 12 districts that responded, there was a total of 199 teacher vacancies as of mid-to-late September, when each district responded to the News 19 inquiry. There were 254 reported vacancies at this time last year, omitting two districts. Richland One did not have numbers from last year available, while Newberry County School District did not give an exact number but said there were fewer than five vacancies. The School District of Newberry County was the only district to report zero teacher vacancies. That speaks to the culture of the district, said Sherry East of the South Carolina Education Association.
"When you have stability in districts, you seem to have less turnover or when you have good leadership in schools there is less turnover," said East.
Clarendon County was the only district to report a higher number of vacancies this year than last year, but the number of vacancies only increased by one. with 4 spots open right now and 3 this time last year.
Sumter has seen the biggest decrease in vacancies—going from 76 this time last year to 43 right now.
News 19 also asked each district if there were particular areas of study or grade levels that have a higher number of vacancies. 7 districts said special education roles are where the most vacancies are.
"I mean if anything is at crisis level it’s the special needs children," said East. "We hear a lot from our special needs teachers right now that their case loads are too high and we don’t have the support levels we need for our classrooms."
State dollars, district funding going to raise teacher salary
This year's state budget boosted teacher pay, raising the minimum starting salary to at least $47,000. East says raising pay could certainly help recruit and retain teachers, but addressing the burden on teachers is the key to keeping them in the classroom.
"Are there unnecessary meetings? Is there unnecessary paperwork?" asked East. "How are we making sure that a teachers life is teaching their children and doing their needed and necessary paperwork and going home?"
Richland County School District One is one district that rose their pay scale in response to the state's raised minimum, in order to make their pay more competitive. Starting pay for the district is now more than $50 thousand.
"We're proud of the supports we have in place," said Superintendent Dr. Craig Witherspoon. "We wanna recognize the hard work that's entailed with being a teacher as well as support and others in the district as well."
A spokesperson for the district reported 52 teacher vacancies. The district couldn't provide a number for how many vacancies they had last year around this time, but Dr. Witherspoon reported the vacancies are lower overall this year. He attributed that to the raise in pay, as well as programs that help first year teachers like their New to One program.
Richland One has faced controversy for reassigning teachers in previous years to adjust student-teacher ratios months into the school year. News 19 asked every district in their inquiry if they anticipated having to move teachers in the coming weeks to address those problems. Several districts declined to answer, while a few said they didn't anticipate any reassignments. Dr. Witherspoon said did not rule out any reassignments, but said that if they do happen they'll be fewer than they have been in previous years.
"We did work on those ratios if you will on the front end," said Witherspoon. "When you get to high school and some of those levels where students sign up for specialty courses and those types of things—depending on enrollment and those factors there might have to be some movement in that regard."
State wide numbers on teacher vacancies will be made when the state’s Educator Supply and Demand Report comes out later this year.