Wake County public schools will work with a staffing agency to find candidates for some of the hardest-to-fill positions across the district, specifically in classrooms where students need academic or behavioral support, school board leaders heard Wednesday.
Under the arrangement, the staffing company will place teachers into open positions and then support them with training and resources as they work toward obtaining their Special Education Residency Licenses, a one-year provisional teaching license that allows teachers to work in special education immediately while completing full certification coursework.
The district is still in contract talks with the company, which was not named publicly during the board’s Wednesday work session, Assistant Superintendent Lisa Allred said. There was no indication during the presentation how much contracting with the company will cost.
“Special ed services will be working directly with this company to outline the training so that the staff is well-versed in the way we expect our staff to engage and what we consider best practice,” Allred said. “We’re trying this on a very small scale since this is new ground for us. But what we recognize is that we’ve got to think outside of the box and try new things to fill some of these vacancies.”
There are currently 77 vacant special education teacher positions out of 1,477 total positions, according to Michael Hyland, WCPSS’s director of media relations. Special education students make up about 22,000 of the district’s 160,000 student population. As part of budget negotiations this spring, district Superintendent Robert P. Taylor proposed eliminating 130 special education positions for a savings of $18 million, but the school board scrapped the idea following outcry from teachers and parents.
“Special education teachers continue to be one of our hardest areas to fill,” Allred said Wednesday. Along with the staffing company, WCPSS is looking at ways to add more special ed teachers, she said, including collaborating with the central office to screen candidates and refer them to principals of schools where they might be good matches. The principals would then interview the candidates to determine if they’re a good fit; the district would prioritize schools that have had longtime vacancies.
“I am a little bit concerned about the company that we’re going to be using, and those fees, and that cost,” said school board member Lynn Edmonds. “I’m just wondering if that’s an added cost versus what we are able to do as Wake County in our own recruitment efforts and then the added cost of using a company.”
Allred noted that the company has a track record of success.
“The support they are providing is on top of the support the school is providing and on top of the regional coordinating teacher,” Allred said. “Their data says that not only are they able to place folks, but that they roll into a licensed teacher position and they stay because of the support of the company. We’re doing this with 10 or 15 positions right now, because we’re … just trying to try things outside of the box.”
Additionally, work is under way on rolling out a regional model for delivering special education services across the district.
WCPSS launched its new Regional Model for Special Education Services in July and August. It is a shift from a reactive approach to addressing special education issues at individual schools to a regional team model for special education services, Allred explained.
Under the framework, the district is divided into two regions with coordinating teachers who oversee five to six schools, as well as a team of administrators. The teachers are tasked with going into their schools weekly to identify needs and build the school staff’s capacity to provide special education services to students, including developing and implementing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).
So far, with the same number of staff as last year, regional coordinating teachers have logged 2,545 support visits from July through October, as many visits as logged from October of last year through the end of the 2025-26 academic year, according to Allred.
Allred said the district is using better tracking technology to log visits, but teachers are also able to visit schools more frequently as they’re assigned fewer schools. School visits are averaging 636 per month compared to 283 per month last year, and teachers are able to support 202 schools this year, up from 197 last year.
Alongside the rollout of the regional model for special education services, WCPSS is working to create a Special Education Advisory Committee composed of special ed staff members, parents of students with IEPs, and other community members. The team will meet monthly starting in January to review data and suggest solutions to challenges facing the district.
