MSDE: Maryland teacher vacancies fall, but program completers are declining; $19.4M Grow Your Own grants launch
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Summary
MSDE reported a midyear decline in teacher vacancies to roughly 726.5 statewide and growth in nationally board‑certified teachers, while completers from preparation programs declined; the department highlighted a $19.4 million Grow Your Own grant opportunity to build pipelines.
Maryland education officials told the State Board of Education on February 1 that teacher vacancies fell significantly during the current school year but that the state continues to face a long‑term pipeline problem.
Kelly Meadows of MSDE said statewide teacher vacancies fell from roughly 886 (reported previously) to about 726.5 open positions in the most recent collection. Meadows said conditionally licensed or resident teachers have remained steady at about 9.5% of the workforce and noted that these provisionally licensed educators tend to be more demographically diverse — an opportunity to recruit and retain a more representative workforce.
Meadows also reported that as of October 2025 Maryland employed 64,191 teachers, a small increase from the prior year, and that National Board‑Certified Teachers (NBCTs) increased to 3,173, a growth trend that MSDE said would take about three more school years to reach a 12% benchmark noted in earlier commission work.
MSDE flagged a concerning multi‑year decline in completers from both traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs and said the department plans to invest in a Grow Your Own grant program to expand pipelines. Meadows told the board the Grow Your Own funding opportunity was approximately $19,400,000 and that applications close March 2, with the goal of supporting collaboratives of educator prep programs and district employers.
Board members asked for disaggregated data on NBCT demographics, school‑level outliers with better retention outcomes, and more analysis of whether recent vacancy declines reflect reductions‑in‑force versus successful hiring. MSDE said it will expand data collection efforts and continue twice‑yearly vacancy counts and school‑level collection to help districts and the board assess trends.
MSDE presented these workforce updates as part of the blueprint implementation and said supplemental support — including career ladders and induction regulations — should help stabilize staffing over time.