North Carolina public schools opened the 2026-27 school year with 6,265 total staff vacancies, a number that looks like good news on its face but comes with an asterisk: districts are increasingly filling classrooms with career-changers still working toward full licensure rather than traditionally trained teachers. Of that total, 2,009 are K-12 teaching vacancies spread across the state's 115 school districts, marking a 6.8% drop from the prior year.
The figures come from the N.C. School Superintendents' Association, which released the district-by-district vacancy data Thursday. As The News & Observer reports, the current 6,265 vacancies compare to 6,209 vacancies districts reported at the start of the previous school year — essentially flat overall, even as the teaching-specific vacancy count improved. Not every job category is trending the same direction, either: statewide school bus driver vacancies actually increased, climbing from 1,223 to 1,278, a 4.5% jump.
Residency Licenses Hit a Record High
The engine behind the teacher vacancy decline isn't a surge of new education-school graduates. It's residency-licensed teachers — a credential covered under N.C. General Statute § 115C-270.20 that lets someone with a bachelor's degree start teaching immediately while completing coursework through an approved educator preparation program on the job. North Carolina school districts hired 5,459 residency-licensed teachers this year, a 5.3% increase and the highest total since the superintendents' association began tracking the statistic in 2022, per the same report.
NCSSA Executive Director Jack Hoke said the trend reflects real progress, but not a solved problem. “North Carolina school districts have made meaningful progress in reducing teacher vacancies,” Hoke said, according to the report, while cautioning that more than 6,200 vacancies still show staffing challenges remain.
Why the Numbers Dropped So Fast
Vacancy totals have been falling sharply for two straight years — down 31% for teacher vacancies and 20% for overall vacancies last year alone, putting the current overall vacancy total 24.8% lower than in 2024 and 44.5% lower than in 2022. Hoke attributed last year's steep decline largely to schools no longer having federal COVID relief funds to pay for extra employees, since that federal money disappeared in 2024. Districts are also grappling with declining student enrollments, which translates into less state funding for positions in the first place — meaning some of the vacancy drop reflects fewer funded jobs to fill, not necessarily an easier hiring environment.
That budget-driven shrinkage lines up with a broader statewide pattern the North Carolina Association of School Administrators tracked separately: total staff vacancies across all 115 districts fell from 9,767 in 2023 to 8,335 in 2024 and 6,209 in 2025, largely because the expiration of ESSER relief funds forced districts to eliminate supplementary grant-funded positions, according to the association's report. In other words, some classrooms are less vacant on paper simply because the position no longer exists to be counted.
What Counts as Vacant Isn't Always Empty
North Carolina's own reporting rules complicate the picture further. Under the state's statutory definition, a teaching position is classified as vacant whenever it isn't filled by an educator holding a qualifying permanent license — and the broadened definition includes temporarily licensed educators and rehired retirees, as EdNC has explained. That distinction matters for how the state's vacancy figures should be read: they reflect a gap between ideal staffing and actual employment status, not classrooms with nobody in them at all.
Middle and high schools statewide report vacancies in Exceptional Children, or special education, and mathematics is also hard to fill. Some rural districts have turned to yet another workaround: The Times of India reported that Halifax County Schools relied on international educators holding J-1 and H-1B visas for 103 of its 159 teachers in early 2026.
The Pipeline and Pay Problems Underneath It All
Even with residency licenses propping up staffing numbers, the state's broader teacher pipeline remains strained. Statewide teacher attrition held relatively flat at 10.11% for the 2024-25 school year, with 9,107 full-time permanent teachers leaving public school districts, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. That churn hits hardest among newer educators: data presented to the State Board of Education showed 14% to 18% of teachers in their first five years left classrooms during that same school year, per EdNC.
The traditional pipeline itself is thin. For every five candidates who enter a North Carolina Educator Preparation Program, only two complete training and become long-term public school teachers, according to state education records reported by WCNC. Compensation likely plays a role: North Carolina ranked 43rd nationally for average teacher pay at $60,323 in 2024-25, roughly $14,000 below the national average, and was projected to slide further to 46th for 2025-26. State lawmakers moved to address entry-level recruitment in this year's budget, approving raises ranging from 5.5% to more than 17%, with the steepest proportional gains for new teachers — lifting starting monthly base pay for first-year teachers with a bachelor's degree from $4,100 to $4,800.
Hoodline previously reported that North Carolina classrooms opened last school year with more than 6,200 unstaffed positions, and later examined how principal turnover was reshaping staffing at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and beyond. Taken together, this year's numbers suggest the state has found short-term fixes for filling seats in classrooms, even as the deeper questions of pay, training, and long-term retention remain unresolved.
