JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) and the state’s largest teachers union are at odds over the framing of teacher vacancies in public schools.

The Florida Department of Education announced Monday that teacher vacancies for the 2024-2025 school year are 13.3% lower than first-day vacancies for the 2023-2024 school year. Schools have reported 1.11 teacher vacancies per school, lower than last year’s average of 1.28 vacancies per school, according to the FDOE. This year’s 13.3% drop in vacancies follows last year’s drop of over 8% in comparison to the previous year.

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“Florida has raised teacher pay, supported teachers in the classroom and created new pathways for qualified individuals to enter the teaching profession,” Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr. said in a news release. “While the naysayers use the same tactics year after year to discredit Florida’s success in Education, once again the numbers speak for themselves. I am proud that Florida’s teacher vacancies continue to decline and I am confident that this is a direct result of the forward-thinking policies that Governor Ron DeSantis has championed.”

The Florida Education Association (FEA), the state’s largest association of professional employees with 120,000 union members, has a different take.

Last week, the FEA released its latest data on teacher vacancies and found that at the start of a new school year, nearly every district in the state is advertising unfilled positions in elementary education, ESE and speech language pathology with no significant improvement in the vacancies for education staff professionals (ESPs).

“When Governor DeSantis and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. pat themselves on the back because they have funded corporate-run schools and micro schools in strip malls, they are doing so at the expense of students in Florida’s public schools by literally siphoning billions each year away from public schools. Make no mistake — this is on purpose,” said Andrew Spar, President of the Florida Education Association.

FEA said its data shows that there are currently 5,007 instructional vacancies, a jump from numbers reported in January of this year, but a decrease from the number reported in August 2023.

“Students across the state are feeling the weight of increased class sizes and not enough teachers or support professionals,” FEA said in a news release.

In an apparent shot at FEA’s teacher data, the FDOE said its vacancy data is reported to the department directly from school districts, “contrary to other sources which have attempted to use inaccurate data to report inflated teacher vacancy data.”

FEA said it counts vacancies posted on district websites twice annually, in August and January. (A county-by-county breakdown of the FEA vacancy numbers can be found here)

Diaz said the decrease in teacher vacancy numbers is a direct result of Gov. DeSantis’ commitment to supporting teachers, with more than $4.6 billion invested in teacher pay increases since 2019.

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But FEA is calling for even more funding — $2.5 billion a year for the next seven years.

FEA said the increase will help address “inadequate salaries so Florida’s teachers are in the top 10 in average pay.”