School administrators in Arizona are working to fill at least 1,000 vacant teacher positions and one district leader said Monday that-- in some cases-- there are vacancies with no interested applicants.
The Arizona Daily Star reported that schools have faced difficulty filling the ranks in the past. The paper pointed out that officials say these positions oftentimes come with low salaries and high turnover rates.
Debbi Burdick, a Cave Creek Unified School District superintendent, told the paper that the district approved a $4,000 signing bonus for qualified teachers, but she still does not have any applicants.
Cecilia Johnson, the state’s Education Department’s associate superintendent of highly effective teachers and leaders, told the paper that—to make matters worse—25 percent of the state’s 60,000 teachers are eligible to retire in the next five years.
Johnson told the paper that the average salary for an Arizona teacher is $47,000.
"It's difficult. It's challenging. And I think many teachers just get frustrated and many teachers have second jobs," a school board spokeswoman, told the paper.
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