More than two months into the school year, Durham Public Schools was still looking for 68 more teachers. Which isn’t so bad, district administrators told the school board this fall—it’s an improvement from last year, thanks to new recruiting strategies and a fully-staffed human resources department.
But reflecting a nationwide trend, nearly half of those vacancies are in special education, which North Carolina calls Exceptional Children’s (EC) classrooms. District leaders cited burnout as a major reason why; EC teachers cater to students with high needs, while their out-of-class time is often consumed by related paperwork and meetings, in a state notorious for low teacher pay.
To help fill these vacancies, DPS has entered an agreement with contracting agency Unlimited Instruction to bring teachers into the classroom as they work on getting provisional special education licenses from the state. The goal is for them to then be hired full-time by DPS and complete their licensing.
“It is a new and—I’ll be very honest with you—an unproven approach—that’s the reason why we find ourselves in a position where we would be willing to try something like this,” Deputy Superintendent Nicholas King told the INDY. “It’s because we really find ourselves in a really challenging environment as it relates to identifying teachers who can fill these important classroom spaces.”
As of October 30, DPS had 28 EC teacher vacancies and 329 EC teachers on staff. The contract with Unlimited Instruction could make a significant dent in the vacancy count by getting up to 20 teachers in the hiring pipeline.
The contract, if Unlimited Instruction sources 20 teachers, costs DPS $1.5 million, but the district will only pay for the instructional hours delivered. Unlimited Instruction pays the teachers—who operate like long-term substitutes—and helps them get a provisional EC teaching license throughout the year, so they are eligible to get hired by DPS at the end of their contract.
Unlimited Instruction says it will save the district money; King estimated the contract is costing DPS about $300,000 less than it would to pay full-time teachers in those positions.
“Unlimited Instruction’s pricing should be evaluated not only against salary and benefits, but against the district’s fully burdened employment cost,” a memo to the school board reads, “and the operational value of reducing recruiting pressure, onboarding demands, administrative workload, compliance responsibilities, coverage gaps, and turnover disruption.”
So far, Unlimited Instruction has matched five teachers to classrooms, with seven more in the pipeline (the program began September 24 and goes through June 30).
Meanwhile, the remaining EC vacancies are filled with instructional assistants or substitute teachers. Sometimes, EC teachers have to fill in on their planning periods or add to their caseloads of students, which can qualify for extra duty pay.
EC teachers are required by federal law to create Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for each of their students, which outline the services the student needs. Teachers must update the IEPs each year and have a formal annual review with parents and service providers.
Kadeidra Smoots, senior executive director of human resources for DPS, said the vacancies can be a strain on the EC teachers who have to step in for meetings and extra paperwork on behalf of instructional assistants or long-term substitutes who are not licensed for certain tasks.
Smoots said some long-term substitutes, unprepared for the difficulty of the job, don’t last long. And similar to long-term substitutes and instructional assistants, the Unlimited Instruction contractors are not yet licensed and are learning on the job.
“It’s not so much of the immediate problem solved,” said Kristin Bell, executive director of EC programming at DPS. “It’s an investment, with the hope that at the end of this period of time we’ll have had them in our classrooms, they’ll have a lot of our training, they’ll know our policies and procedures, and they’re honing their skills over the course of the year.”
‘You’re Never Just Teaching’
Christy Patterson, an EC teacher at Carrington Middle School, began as an instructional assistant eight years ago in a classroom without a teacher. Within 30 days, Patterson got a provisional license and was hired as the lead teacher.
Over the next three years as Patterson worked toward her certification, she had to “swim or sink,” she said. Patterson modifies curricula for the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders that she teaches, in addition to managing their IEPs and mentoring beginning teachers. Patterson said she has mentored strong early-career teachers, yet none of them have stayed longer than a year—opting for other school districts or private schools. Patterson said she had to add 20 students to her caseload at one point due to vacancies in her school.
Patterson, who is vice president for the Durham Association of Educators, said additional guidance and support from the district could help retain teachers.
“What DPS has failed to realize is, if you show a little support and appreciation to the ones you got, and give them a little more for the extra work they’re doing—just a little appreciation—you will be surprised what people will do for you,” Patterson said.
Hannah Hribar, who leads EC programming for DPS elementary schools, was an EC teacher through the first year of the pandemic. She said the online and hybrid teaching model, where she was employed in Orange County at the time, took an emotional toll and led her to pursue a job in leadership at DPS.
Besides the meetings and paperwork, EC teachers often have to engage with social workers and counselors to address students’ needs outside the school system.
“You’re never just teaching,” Hribar said. “There’s always a bunch of other things you’re doing that are outside what the job description might say, and I think it does lead to a lot of burnout.”
Hribar said in her four years overseeing EC programming, she’s observed more early-career teachers moving between schools and leaving teaching altogether after only a few years.
“It does seem like we’re having folks come through and just cycling through, and then we’re seeing our veteran teachers not growing in numbers,” Hribar said.
About 80% of the 28 EC teacher vacancies in DPS are in self-contained classrooms for students with more severe disabilities, often with one lead teacher and multiple instructional assistants. The remaining vacancies are for EC resource teachers, who pull students out of their general education classrooms for specialized instruction. (Outside of the EC teacher vacancies, there are about 30 more openings for EC-related staffing, including licensed therapists, psychologists, and instructional assistants.)
Smoots said EC teachers need to be highly trained and specialized to teach students with a variety of behavioral and physical needs, who may experience behavioral or emotional crises.
“The kicking, the biting—for most teachers, especially new ones coming in, that’s not something that’s attractive for them,” Smoots said.
North Carolina is ranked notoriously low for teacher pay and per-pupil spending from the state, and while EC teacher turnover has always been a challenge, it worsened across the country after the pandemic.
King, the deputy superintendent, said it has been particularly challenging in the last decade to staff EC positions and that he is seeing fewer interested and qualified candidates than he used to.
At North Carolina Central University, Maureen Short has been training master’s students in special education for 15 years, and she said the field has always been hard to staff. Just before the pandemic, NCCU’s special education master’s program hired its own recruiter for the first time to raise the program’s numbers.
Short received a federal grant in 2022 to train special education teachers, with the first cohort set to graduate with their master’s degrees this fall. The program—which covers tuition, books, and about $600 worth of licensing exams—can accommodate 150 aspiring teachers and currently has about 100.
“You would think with the grants supporting students, we would be hopefully busting at the seams,” Short said. “But not so much.”
The teachers from the grant-funded program are funneled into jobs in Wake and Chatham counties; NCCU has separately partnered with DPS since 2019 to train instructional assistants to be licensed EC teachers, but currently doesn’t have any in its program.
Short said completing the four licensing exams required to work as an EC teacher can be a deterrent for aspiring teachers, in addition to entering a field with low pay. North Carolina does not offer a salary bump for teachers with master’s degrees, but some counties, including Durham, fund pay increases instead.
The NCCU grant-funded program offers students a stipend as they complete their degrees.
“That is to offer an incentive and encourage folks to get into special education,” Short said. “But unfortunately, even with that in place, we don’t have very many takers.”
For those that do join the EC teacher workforce and stick with it, it’s a labor of love.
Patterson said her career is a “gut calling.” She conducts home visits with social workers and organizes field trips—some of her students have never left Durham, she said.
“The common denominator are these children,” Patterson said through tears. ”And if we are all working to provide the best for these children, whether you say yellow and I say green, and we might have different opinions and different ways to get to it, I don’t care. We know our goal is to provide the best for these children.”
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