LANSING, Mich. — Lansing Public School District human resources officials told the school board on Jan. 28 that the district has cut classroom teacher vacancies dramatically since a peak of roughly 90–100 openings and laid out several steps intended to sustain the change and improve teacher retention.

Senior Director of Human Resources Mr. Ross presented a data-driven summary showing the district now counts about 24 schools, roughly 10,974 students and about 1,600 employees across certificated and support positions. Ross said the district is using a mix of recruitment platforms, alternative-certification pipelines and international hiring to fill positions and that efforts have produced both “meaningful gains” in educator diversity and a sustained reduction in open positions.

District officials said vacancies that were once in the dozens each month now hover around the low 20s, with special-education openings reduced to near zero at several points. The presentation credited an updated applicant-tracking system, targeted recruiting, partnerships and changes to interview processes for the progress.

Why it matters: teacher vacancies and turnover affect classroom continuity and program delivery. The HR report combined numerical trends with qualitative exit-survey results to highlight where the district can act next: school leadership, staff support and student behavior emerged as recurring factors in why employees leave.

What the HR office told the board
- Hiring and applicant management: The district replaced an older applicant system with Lever, a mobile-friendly applicant-tracking system that HR staff said has made it faster for candidates to apply, lets the district track where applicants come from and enables recorded interviews. HR said the new platform has improved candidate experience scores, with virtual interview-stage respondents averaging about 4.0–4.5 on a 5‑point scale.
- Vacancy reductions: Officials said summer recruiting and a more proactive applicant-pool strategy — including pre-interview phone screens, recorded interviews and a single pool for multiple openings — drove the largest year‑over‑year drop in posted classroom vacancies. The presentation described a long summer of active hiring and weekly check-ins with principals to track at‑school staffing needs.
- Workforce snapshot and diversity: Ross reported gains in the number of Black/African American teachers (an increase cited from 8 to 13 in the dataset presented) and said 55–57% of building-level leaders were people of color. HR leaders noted continued underrepresentation among Latinx, Asian and Native teachers and described both short- and longer-term strategies to address that.
- Alternative certification and partnerships: The district currently uses multiple pathways to bring adults into classrooms, including “alt-route” programs (for example, Teachers of Tomorrow — 93 participants were noted), district tuition/MOU arrangements with area colleges, a Grow Your Own grant to move paraprofessionals into teacher pathways and partnerships with Teach For America and an international recruiting firm that has already placed nine teachers on visas.
- International hiring: A staffing partner (the International Alliance Group) has helped place teachers from several countries into hard‑to‑fill roles and immersion programs; HR said the partner handles complex visa processing and the district conducts the interviews and placements.
- Turnaround teacher pilot: To staff multiple hard‑to‑fill midyear vacancies at one low‑performing school, the district negotiated a one‑year, higher-pay “turnaround teacher” position in collaboration with the union. HR said the pilot brought six teachers into those roles (two internal moves, four new hires) and created a small cohort focused on improving school culture midyear.
- Retention signals and exit data: For the first time the district has higher-volume exit-survey responses (an overall response rate to exit outreach near 28–30% for the sample presented). HR’s qualitative coding of open-ended responses identified leadership/support, student behavior and pursuit of a less-stressful work environment as common themes. The district’s year‑to‑year retention rate was presented near national averages: roughly 85% for licensed staff, lower for some bargaining units (the presentation cited a 73% retention figure in one support unit that HR linked to historically lower pay but said was recently addressed by a new contract).
- New-teacher supports: Recognizing a large incoming cohort of early‑career teachers (about 120 listed as first‑year staff), HR described plans to pilot a three‑year new‑teacher network with regular check-ins, targeted professional development and cohort-based mentoring to improve onboarding and early retention.

Board and staff questions focused on several operational details, including monthly and seasonal turnover patterns, whether applicants are coming mainly from Michigan colleges, the mix of permit vs. certification among new hires, and how midyear teacher moves would be backfilled and supported to avoid harming students already in affected classrooms.

What HR plans next
HR leaders said they will: expand recruiter outreach to targeted institutions and networks, continue using their application platform to analyze sourcing data, pilot the new‑teacher cohort work this spring prior to a fuller fall launch, and refine stay/exit surveys so the district can compare answers over time. Officials asked the board for continued support for summer hiring capacity and for flexibility to pilot operational innovations.

Ending note: HR and board members repeatedly framed the work as iterative — the presentation emphasized recent, measurable progress in reducing vacancies while acknowledging continued work needed on retention, principal coaching and recruitment for underrepresented educator groups.