South Carolina Went From 1,000 Teacher Vacancies to 706. What's Left Is Special Education, and It Won't Fall the Same Way.

South Carolina's teacher shortage is improving. Districts reported 706 vacancies at the start of the 2025–26 school year, down from just over 1,000 the year before, according to the state's annual educator supply and demand report as covered by WRDW (September 18). Part of the gain came from outside the traditional pipeline: more than 300 teachers entered classrooms this year through one alternative certification program alone, and the program says its candidates help fill some of the state's greatest staffing needs, including special education.

Fullmind's own South Carolina history is relevant here. Allendale County's work on persistent teacher vacancies and Richland Two's Homework Help program are both on Fullmind's Impact & Research page; in Richland Two, "84% of caregivers felt their child benefitted from Fullmind's Homework Help service."

Our view: a 32% drop in vacancies in a year is real progress, and South Carolina's alternative routes earned it. The next 30% will be harder, because the vacancies that fell first were the ones a motivated career-changer could fill with a summer of training. About a quarter of the ones that remain are in special education, where the certification is longer, the work is harder, and the applicant pool was already thin. A state that cut vacancies from 1,000 to 706 with pipeline tools should expect those same tools to slow down on the last 700, and plan a different answer for the special education caseloads that are open today.

What happened

• The state's 2025–26 Annual Educator Supply and Demand Report from the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement (CERRA): 706 teacher vacancies at the start of 2025–26, down from 1,043 in 2024–25, a 32% decrease.
• More than 300 teachers entered South Carolina classrooms this school year through Teachers of Tomorrow, an alternative certification program, WRDW reported; the program reports special education among the needs its candidates fill.
• The Learning Policy Institute's 2026 state update lists South Carolina's 706 vacancies alongside 7,138 teachers who were teaching outside their field of certification in 2024–25.
• Fullmind's Allendale partnership ("Solving the Teacher Shortage in Allendale") and Richland Two Homework Help results are published on Fullmind's site.

A 32% drop in vacancies in a year is real progress, and South Carolina's alternative routes earned it.

What it means for districts (analysis)

Credit the record above to the state's, the program's and the reporter's. Credit, or blame, the analysis below to us.

The easy vacancies went first. Alternative certification is excellent at moving a working adult into a general-education classroom. It is slower and less reliable for special education, where the credential takes longer and the attrition is higher. The composition of the remaining 706 is the story, not the total. About a quarter of those vacancies were in special education, WIS reported.

7,138 out-of-field teachers is the other half of the number. A vacancy filled by someone teaching outside their certification is counted as filled. For a student on an IEP, the difference between a certified special educator and a well-meaning out-of-field teacher is the difference between services delivered and services owed.

Progress at the state level is still a vacancy in the building. A district in the Pee Dee with two open special education positions does not experience the 32% improvement. It experiences the caseload its remaining teacher is carrying.

Bridge the hardest positions while the pipeline works. For the special education caseloads that remain open, the answer this semester is a certified special educator delivering the minutes on the school's schedule, with the paraprofessional as facilitator, while the state's pipeline keeps producing.

Practical considerations for district leaders

1. Classify your remaining vacancies by certification difficulty. The special education ones need a different plan from the elementary ones.
2. Build a weekly ledger of undelivered IEP minutes per student for every open special education position.
3. Count certified hours per student in sections covered by out-of-field teachers; that number is where outcomes slip quietly.
4. Keep using the alternative routes; they work. Pair them with a this-semester coverage plan for the positions they will not fill by January.
5. The district decides who qualifies, what the IEP requires and what families hear; a delivery partner delivers.

Where Fullmind fits

South Carolina took vacancies from 1,000 to 706, and the 706 are the hard ones. Fullmind has worked in South Carolina on exactly this: its Allendale County partnership is on the Impact & Research page as "Solving the Teacher Shortage in Allendale," and in Richland Two, "84% of caregivers felt their child benefitted from Fullmind's Homework Help service." Elevate K-12 is now part of Fullmind.

• SWD Services & IEP Fulfillment covers the special education caseloads alternative certification fills slowest. Fullmind's more than 3,000 educators include the state-certified special educators who deliver its special education instruction.
• LIVE Staffing is the Allendale service: a certified teacher live in a core section the district could not staff.
• Related Service Providers deliver speech-language, OT/PT, school psychology and counseling minutes in the Pee Dee and Lowcountry districts where those licenses are scarcest.

Live staffing, math growth and remote instruction are where our published results are so far; special education results are in progress. What we can document today is the model, the certification, and the minutes delivered on the district's schedule. In South Carolina the evidence includes a district Fullmind has already worked with; ask us about Allendale.

Run the numbers with us

If your district's remaining vacancies are special education, send us the caseloads and the minutes owed. We will show what a certified live model delivers this semester, the cost, and what Allendale's experience looked like. Schedule a consultation with Fullmind.

Bottom line

South Carolina districts reported 706 teacher vacancies at the start of 2025–26, down 32% from 1,043 a year earlier, and alternative routes such as Teachers of Tomorrow helped close the gap. The count has limits. It is a count taken at the start of the school year, so it misses positions that opened or were filled later, and it treats seats held by teachers working outside their certification as filled. The statewide total also does not show which districts carry the hardest openings.

The decision it informs is how to plan for the vacancies the pipeline will not fill by January: separate special education openings from the rest, track the IEP minutes each one leaves undelivered, and set a coverage plan for those positions now.

Sources: CERRA, "2025-26 South Carolina Annual Educator Supply and Demand Report," November 2025; WRDW, "S.C. teacher vacancies drop as alternative certification program grows," September 18, 2026; WIS, "Vacant teaching jobs in SC fall close to early pandemic level," November 26, 2025; Learning Policy Institute, "State Teacher Shortages 2026 Update," July 2026; Fullmind Impact & Research (Allendale, Richland Two). The sources supplied the figures; Fullmind supplied the analysis and stands behind it.