Teacher shortage has complicated causes

BUFFALO — While discussions about teacher retention and recruitment often focus on salaries and benefits, those are just a part of what has made the profession less adept at attracting and keeping its professionals over the past several years.

Johnson County School District No. 1 has been fortunate this year, with all critical teaching positions filled several weeks before the start of school. And according to EdWeek’s 2025 EdRecruiter report, which shares survey data related to teacher retention and recruitment, progress has been made nationally in addressing the teacher shortage, despite it still being a challenge for most schools.

However, Superintendent Charles Auzqui said teacher retention and recruitment challenges remain a concern both in the state and nationally – and he expects it to be an issue that will only get worse unless more is done to address its causes.

And the state isn’t unaware, as one of the interim topics for the Legislature’s joint education committee this year is on teacher retention and recruitment. Legislative committees discuss interim topics to then hear research on them and potentially write legislation to address them. The committee’s agenda for its Aug. 21 meeting included a discussion on teacher retention and recruitment.

In a memo to the committee, the Wyoming Department of Education asserted that the rural nature of the state, a shortage of qualified teachers in certain subject areas and a high turnover rate at both the educator and school leadership levels have contributed to ongoing challenges with teacher retention and recruitment in Wyoming.

However, a presentation submitted by the Wyoming Education Association ahead of the meeting focuses on teacher morale as one of the major contributors to why many educators leave the profession sooner than expected. 

The department listed several factors impacting teacher morale, including the mental health of both the students and the teachers themselves, pay and workload.

According to the EdRecruiter report, increased wages remain the most important way to retain teachers, with 74% of educators who left the profession within the past year responding that a higher salary was one of the main ways they could have been convinced to stay.

As part of the state of Wyoming’s school funding recalibration process that began this summer, as it does every five years, the amount of funding in the model that will be generated for teacher salaries may increase.

Johnson County School District No. 1 Superintendent Charles Auzqui said that wages are important, and the district has prioritized raising salaries for its employees. 

Just in the past couple of years, the district was able to raise its base pay for educators from $46,000 to $49,000. Depending on how the recalibration process goes, the district may be able to raise salaries even further next year.

However, Auzqui said, wages are just one area of many that are important for retention and recruitment.

Educators face greater demands than ever, Auzqui said. 

Forty years ago, state standardized testing in Wyoming didn’t exist like it does now, he said. Now, teachers must navigate many forms of testing and performance measurements. 

The level of training for educators has also become more intense.

“There’s more accountability than there ever has been,” Auzqui said. “... The burnout that we’re seeing with teachers is because we’re asking more and more of them all the time.”

Those increased expectations are coupled with greater behavioral issues in the classroom, Auzqui said. 

Educators —  particularly those in early education — have to take time to teach some of their students the social and emotional skills they need to succeed, Auzqui said. While students aren’t tested on their social or emotional skills, such as emotional regulation and the ability to work well with others, those skills are necessary for students to effectively learn and function in a classroom setting.

According to the results of a teacher climate survey administered by the Wyoming Teacher Retention and Recruitment Task Force in 2023, 68% of teachers agreed that student behavioral issues make their jobs more difficult.

In the EdRecruiter report, after a higher salary, the other two changes that would have convinced educators who left the profession in the last year to stay would have been a more reasonable workload and more support with student behavior and discipline.

Recruiters in the EdRecruiter survey identified similar challenges when it comes to recruiting teachers. The workload and classroom management challenges such as student cell phone use, disruptive behavior or lack of respect from students were the two other biggest challenges.

One of the ways the district has tried to increase support for teachers has been through fortifying its teacher induction program and professional learning communities. Professional learning communities are a model of teacher collaboration to improve student achievement.

The district also runs staff surveys to gather input on what the district and its leadership can do better, although most building leaders are aware of what needs improvement before they get the results, Auzqui said. While a lot of shuffling in building leadership has taken place over the past couple of years, Auzqui said he feels confident the right people are in the right places.

“A building admin that’s involved with their staff is going to know what’s going on without a survey,” he said.

The district is working to better support educators through measures such as the teacher induction program, but teacher retention and recruitment is affected by a broader lack of support from the community and the state, according to the WEA.

In the WEA’s 2023 climate survey, only 20% of educators felt “high or somewhat high” support from their communities.

That’s in line with the fourth and fifth-highest challenges on EdRecruiter’s list, which were the public or community’s negative perceptions of the teaching profession and potential teaching candidates’ negative perceptions of the teaching profession.

Auzqui said he wishes to see more support for the profession, as well as public education overall, in the state. For example, Wyoming’s fourth and eighth graders performed above the national average on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress in both reading and math.

Not enough is done to sing the praises of public education, Auzqui said, which can lead to educators feeling underappreciated and even affect the way students feel about their educators.

“We need, from the state level, to start talking about how amazing public education is,” he  said.

This story was published on August 28, 2025.