Is Illinois Experiencing a “Teacher Shortage”? No Shortage of Ideas to Solve Teacher Vacancies this School Year – Center For Illinois Politics

“We anticipate having more licensed educators than last year at this time – and more teachers than at any point in this past decade,” said Mary Fergus, Media Relations Executive Director for Chicago Public Schools (CPS). “We’ve added more than 500 new teacher positions for this school year and 1,000 school-based positions overall.” But even with these gains, Fergus estimates CPS will see a slight uptick, possibly to 4% or 5%, in CPS’ vacancy rate over last year’s 3.5% figure.  Fergus explains, “Because we created more positions and our final year-over-year attrition rates are expected to be higher.”