Why Florida is experiencing a teacher shortage

At the halfway point of the 2023-24 school year, the Florida Education Association reported that there were still 4,096 advertised instructional vacancies in Florida K-12 public schools. In Southwest Florida, Collier County had 174 advertised instructional vacancies, Lee County had 260 and Charlotte County had just 25 openings.

Statewide, the vacancy numbers had improved from August 2023 levels, when there were 6,920 advertised vacancies for teachers (up from 6,006 in August 2022). And those vacancies don’t mean that kids are necessarily sitting in teacher-less classrooms. Many of the openings in Collier County, for example, were being covered by long-term guest teachers who hold bachelor’s degrees and are working toward certification in the state. The school district said it must keep those vacancies posted for audit purposes, as it’s working to fill them with full-time teachers.

But the FEA said a shortage of more than 4,000 teachers is more than the population of teachers in 19 of Florida’s smallest counties combined. And with that number of posted and advertised vacancies, potentially hundreds of thousands of Florida students don’t have access to a full-time, certified teacher.

The problem’s not unique to Florida. The National Center for Education Statistics reported in October 2023 that 86% of U.S. K-12 public schools had challenges hiring teachers for the 2023-24 school year. But according to a study released by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, Florida leads the way when it comes to measurable teacher vacancy numbers among the 50 states.

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