FEA: Teacher and support staff vacancies stand near 10,000 statewide

Teacher with students, in a classroom. Credit: Getty Images.

Nearly 10,000 public school teacher and staff positions are vacant as the 2024-2025 school year opens, according to Florida Education Association data .

Of the 9,842 vacancies, 5,007 are instructional positions and 4,835 are support staff.

The number of vacancies is down from 11,992 in August 2023.

“It should not be lost on anyone that, right now, nearly 5,000 classrooms do not have a professionally trained teacher, impacting potentially over 100,000 students,” said Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar in a news release. “Additionally, we continue to hear from teachers around the state that classrooms are overflowing with students and teachers are scrambling to find more desks and chairs.”

Spar said politicians have not made “significant strides” to address the shortage.

“The issue remains — Florida is one of the wealthiest states in the nation and yet anti-public education politicians have made the choice to keep Florida teachers ranked at the bottom of the nation in average pay, have not made significant strides in fixing the critical teacher shortage, and have worked hard to disparage teachers along the way. Voters are watching — and they don’t like what they see,” Spar said.

The data from the FEA represent a compilation of advertised vacancies listed on school district websites. Support staff includes positions like bus drivers, groundskeepers, custodians, non-specialized teacher aides, and health-related workers.

Districts facing the largest instructional vacancies include Hillsborough at 742, Broward at 606, Palm Beach at 490, Polk at 321, and Lee at 272,

Miami-Dade had 389 instructional vacancies in August 2023. As of now, that number is 194.

Hillsborough, however, has more than 100 additional instructional vacancies posted than in 2023 — 742  compared to 625 last year.

Palm Beach had more than 300 support staff vacancies posted when the union gathered the 2024 numbers. The district had 579 posted in 2023 and 884 in 2024.

Volusia had 216 instructional vacancies posted in 2023 and 53 in 2024.

The Florida Department of Education has not yet reported its count of teacher vacancies for the start of the school year. It did report vacancies last year – along with a statement saying the FEA “falsely reported” vacancies to be 2,000 higher than the department found.

Data from the Florida Department of Education indicate 466,233 certifications were held in the state during the 2022-2023 school year.

The department says the greatest need is in classrooms serving students with disabilities — teachers with Exceptional Student Education certificates.

English, science, math, and English for speakers of other languages are the next most in-demand certifications.

In 2022-2023, the most common certification held by Florida teachers was elementary education, followed by English for speakers of other languages, reading, special education, and pre-K.

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Why the vacancies?

According to Florida TaxWatch , the shortages persist as fewer people enter the profession. Pew Research says 21% of bachelor’s degree graduates in the United States in 1970-1971 were in education. That number in 2019-2020 was 4%.

TaxWatch offers as explanations for vacancies stress, low pay, Florida’s high cost of living, and the political climate.

“Education is becoming more weaponized as policymakers wrest more control over curriculum from the teachers and allow parents a greater toehold in shaping their children’s education,” the TaxWatch report says.

“Recent policies limiting which books can and cannot be read, which subjects can and cannot be taught, how issues regarding identity and culture are addressed, among others, are creating a much more politically charged learning environment.”

TaxWatch also points to government initiatives to increase teacher pay , the Florida Hometown Heroes Housing Program — providing down payment and closing cost assistance to veterans, nurses, teachers, and law enforcement officers — and alternative pathways to teacher licenses for veterans, “classical” schoolteachers (emphasizing the Western canon), and offering apprenticeships, as ways to lure more teachers.

Florida ranks second lowest in teacher pay nationwide, according to the National Education Association (NEA). The average starting salary for teachers in Florida is $48,286, according to the governor’s office. The national average starting teacher salary is $44,530, according to the NEA.

The average teacher salary in Florida , according to the union, is $53,098, more than $16,000 below the national average of $69,544.

David Finkle, a high school English teacher at DeLand High School in Volusia County, said teachers in the district have “upwards of 200 students.”

“For most of my career, 150 students seemed like a lot,” Finkle said in a news release. “Now I have over 180. In a school of over 3,000 students, we have less than four English teachers for seniors. It is not the school’s fault. We simply aren’t being funded well enough — we are being set up to fail.”

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