Wake schools has more than 98% of teaching positions filled

The Wake County Public School System has fewer teacher vacancies now than at this time last year, according to data released by the school system Thursday.

2026-08-20

The data reflects generally improving teacher recruitment for schools, though vacancies remain and schools continue to struggle with a shortage of teaching candidates with qualifying credentials.

The Wake district has filled 98.6% of its about 11,000 teaching positions. That means 156 teaching jobs remain unfilled. Most of them are in general education.

That's exciting for Crystal Gregory, who specializes in recruitment for the district.

"It is one of the highest that we've seen in quite a long time," Gregory said.

She said the district has about 6,000 substitute teachers if it needs them.

"100% is always our goal, but our schools have incredible plans in order to fill those positions," Gregory said. "98.6 feels great until it's your child's classroom that doesn’t have a teacher, and so we are incredibly proud of our school staff who have plans in place."

The vacancy rate is higher for special education teachers. About 4% of those positions remain unfilled with the start of the traditional school year just around the corner.

The district has more vacancies than it did last year in instructional assistants, and most of those are in special education. Out of more than 2,700 instructional assistants, the district still needs to hire 125. That's a vacancy rate of 4.6%.

The district has fewer positions overall this year because of a drop in enrollment and some recent local budget changes that cut some instructional coaching positions.

The 160,000-student district is North Carolina's largest and one of the largest in the nation. It has about 200 schools.

Higher pay makes it easier to hire teachers

Teacher pay is primarily a responsibility of the state, which recently provided average raises of 8% for teachers, after teachers received no cost-of-living raises the year before. 

Gregory credited the extra pay the county is able to provide -- the local supplement -- with helping the district recruit teachers.

Wake County has one of the state's highest local supplements on top of the state's base salary schedule, and it pays an additional supplement to teachers with Master's degrees. The state stopped additional pay for graduate degrees in 2013.

Still, the district's salary schedule for teachers without extra certifications is much lower than most school districts in metropolitan areas with similar costs of living, such as Nashville, Atlanta and Jacksonville, a recent WRAL analysis found.

Recruiting teachers

Superintendent Robert Taylor told WRAL News earlier this summer that he believes teacher support is a key part of recruiting teachers in the county, in part because the district can only raise pay by so much.

"What keeps a teacher in your district is the professional development and support that you provide to them," Taylor previously told WRAL News. "We would put that support up against any district in this country."

Kimmie Tomczak said she has seen that support in just a few days on the job.

"I have gotten so many supplies from other teachers, and everyone's trying to teach me how to use the copy machine and how to set up my classroom website, and I couldn't appreciate it more," said Tomczak, a first-year science teacher at Willow Spring High School in Fuquay-Varina. "They've just been super welcoming, and I can't wait to see the kids next week."

Tomczak graduated from the Wake school system and was a part of its Future Teachers program, which provides built-in support and training to prospective teachers who are former students throughout their college careers. That was on top of being a North Carolina Teaching Fellow at North Carolina State University. The state-funded fellowship provides financial assistance toward becoming a teacher.

But what got Tomczak into teaching was a former teacher of hers.

Her ninth grade English teacher wrote her a to-do list for the summer, telling her to always be kind, to come back and visit her, and to consider becoming a teacher. Tomczak did a great job supporting her friends and being kind to others, the teacher wrote.

"I took that to heart," Tomczak said. "She's been supper influential to me, and I'm happy to be here now."

The letter hangs on Tomczak's bulletin board in her new classroom.

Fewer teachers, improving fill rates

Last week, several other school systems in and around the Triangle showed lower vacancy rates this school year than last year.

Several factors have combined to create some of the recent success schools have had.

For one, schools aren't hiring as many teachers anymore.

Districts don't have the extra teaching positions anymore that they had for a few years after the Covid-19 pandemic. Those were funded by temporary federal stimulus dollars that have run out since 2024.

Traditional public school enrollment is also down. With fewer students, schools just don't need as many teachers.

In the past few years, schools have also ramped up the hiring of people whose degrees are actually in something other than education, such as science or criminal justice. A lot of them have worked other jobs or careers before going into teaching.

Those teachers are on temporary licenses, and state data show nearly half of them aren't getting permanent ones.