Memphis-Shelby County Schools does not have an August hiring problem. It has a year-round retention problem that becomes impossible to hide when classrooms open.
The pattern is familiar: special education, high-school mathematics, elementary schools, and Priority schools carry the largest burden. MSCS began the 2026–27 school year with roughly 300 teaching vacancies. About 70 positions had offers pending, leaving approximately 230 classrooms without a candidate in the pipeline. That is essentially unchanged from August 2025—and far above Superintendent Richmond’s goal of fewer than 100 vacancies.
The district is better off than it was two years ago, when it began the school year short roughly 478 instructional employees. But improvement from a crisis is not the same as solving it. In the spring before that school year, MSCS reported 617 openings—about 10 percent of its teaching force. By late August 2026, it still had approximately 275 staff vacancies.
Nashville offers a useful comparison. Metro Nashville Public Schools also entered the summer with more than 100 classroom vacancies. But by August 11, it had reduced that number to 32 and reported a fill rate above 99 percent. Both districts use temporary permits. Both compete in the same state labor market. The difference is that Nashville converted applicants into staffed classrooms. Memphis did not.
The deeper measure is not how many teachers are hired by September. It is how many remain in the same school.
Shelby County’s same-school retention rate is 73.7 percent, the fifth-lowest in Tennessee. The statewide rate is 79.8 percent. That means roughly one in four Shelby County teachers is not in the same school the following year. Some transfer within the district; others retire or leave.
However, for students, especially in schools already struggling to build continuity, the effect is the same: another adult at the front of the classroom must learn the school, the students, and the work. We must do better.
MSCS’s own history is more troubling. A 2021 district report found that more than half of new Memphis teachers left. That remains the last clear early-career retention figure the district has published. A district that cannot say how many first-year teachers remain after one, two, and three years is trying to manage a problem it has not fully measured.
The district is also relying heavily on conditional permits. As of September 4, 2025, 220 new MSCS hires held permits that expire after three years. Nashville had 340 teachers on temporary permits at the start of this school year, down from 420. Both systems are permit-dependent, but Memphis is simultaneously short more than 200 teachers.
That should be understood as a warning, not a staffing strategy. Unlicensed teachers leave at higher rates than certified teachers, particularly during their first three years. A permit-heavy hiring class can become the next year’s retention crisis.
Virtual teachers create a similar accounting problem. MSCS covered nearly 100 classrooms last year through a $4.7 million Proximity Learning contract, which has been reapproved. That may be a necessary emergency measure. But a virtual teacher and a stable, licensed, in-person teacher are not equivalent. Students in Priority schools and special-education classrooms are the ones most likely to absorb that difference.
The district’s financial response is reasonable. Eligible classroom teachers can receive a $1,000 stay incentive, or $1,500 in Priority schools and the 14 TISA accountability schools. Performance bonuses in those schools range from $1,500 to $5,000, tied to effectiveness ratings. Hard-to-fill hires, including special-education teachers, can receive $2,500 sign-on bonuses.
Targeting the schools where retention has historically been weakest is better than scattering money across the system. But bonuses cannot close a 200-plus vacancy gap if principals cannot hold staff and permit holders never complete licensure.
The state’s educator survey makes the point. Eighty-two percent of teachers said they planned to stay. Among those planning to leave, the leading factors were personal reasons, leadership, staff culture, and workload. Salary ranked fifth. Only about one-third of Tennessee teachers reported satisfaction with pay.
Pay still matters. Memphis is losing certified teachers to municipal districts that pay more on average. In 2023–24, Arlington, Collierville, Germantown, and Bartlett all exceeded MSCS’s average teacher pay of roughly $65,200. Certified teachers have an exit path that does not require leaving Shelby County.
But compensation is not the whole explanation. Teachers often accept difficult work for manageable pay when they trust their leaders, respect their colleagues, and believe school problems will be addressed. Teach901’s surveys point in the same direction: mission and school leadership influence whether teachers take a job, while peer recruitment now outweighs principal recruitment. Leadership ratings have slipped, especially on the question of whether administrators solve problems.
That is why another August hiring fair will not fix this. Recruitment matters, but recruitment cannot outrun attrition indefinitely.
MSCS should publish three distinct measures: same-school retention, same-district retention, and exits. Each should be broken out for new teachers, Priority schools, special education, and high-school mathematics. The district should report whether teachers receiving retention or sign-on bonuses are still employed the following October. It should report virtual placements separately from staffed classrooms. And it should publish the number of permit holders who complete the Praxis and required coursework before their permits expire.
The most useful investment is not simply hiring more teachers. It is keeping the effective teacher already in the building and helping the promising permit holder become fully licensed.
Vacancies are the symptom. The disease is instability. Memphis will not solve it until retention is treated not as a human-resources statistic, but as the central measure of whether its schools are working.
JC Bowman is the executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee. He is a contributing editor to TriStar Daily.
