Three percent of the educational workforce experienced a mass exodus, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 300,000 teachers left the field since the pandemic.

The vacancies that have been left due to the mass exodus have stretched and stressed the remaining educators. National Center for Education Statistics reported 44% of public schools had vacancies and were short-staffed as of 2022.

This is not being alleviated by new college graduates, as colleges have seen a decrease in the enrollment of teacher education programs.

Since schools are short-staffed, teacher burn-out is real. Teachers leave in the middle of the year creating a higher turn over rate than usual. In addition, teachers require more mental health days and are “chronically absent- missing more than 10 days in an academic school year”. This directly affects student achievement, as there are less substitutes and many classes are either left with no coverage, coverage by non-educators (administrators, coaches, or counselors) or combined with other classes (split-lists) for supervision.