(The Center Square) – More than 1,000 teachers in Arizona have quit since July, according to a new report.
The Arizona Department of Education recently released a survey showing a mass exodus over the last four months.
The number of teachers resigning before the start of a school year nearly doubled this year from 2024. According to the department’s survey last year, 517 teachers resigned after July.
But this year’s higher number came as no surprise to the department’s head and the head of the Arizona Education Association, who agree the state should raise teachers’ pay.
Tom Horne, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction, told The Center Square that the teacher shortage is “old news” to him.
The new survey found more than 4,000 teaching positions are open, with almost 30% filled by long-term substitutes. Horne said the trend of long-term substitutes filling in for teachers is nothing new.
Arizona is currently three months into its 2025-2026 school year. If the exodus of teachers continues into 2026-27, it will have a “negative effect on academic achievement,” Horne noted.
Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, told The Center Square that she also was not surprised by the survey.
“In our last internal survey, nearly a third of our members (who are public-school educators) were considering leaving the profession,” she said.
According to the National Education Association, based on 2022-2023 school-year salaries, Arizona ranks 32nd in the country, with an average teacher salary of $60,275.
Garcia noted Arizona salaries for teachers are “low” and “benefits are terrible,” adding that many teachers are “taking on second and third jobs to make ends meet.”
In addition, “we’re digging into our own pockets to buy pencils and praying that our classroom ceiling makes it through the next rainstorm,” Garcia said. “We’re staying well beyond contract hours so that our students get extra help, or so our school doesn’t lose the sports team we coach.”
Garcia said teachers are being “asked to do more with less,” even as class sizes continue to grow.
“We love our jobs and we love our students, but it becomes harder to teach in Arizona with every year that passes. Lawmakers know that this is a problem — and we wish that they’d talk to us more about how to fix it,” Garcia said.
Horne told The Center Square he has been talking about the pay issue for years.
If the Legislature doesn’t raise pay, Arizona could lose even more teachers, said Horne.
Horne said teachers’ pay can increase if Proposition 123 gets renewed by the Legislature. In 2016, Arizona voters approved a ballot measure that increased the amount of money K-12 education got from its state land trust fund from 2.5% to 6.9%.
The proposition allocated $3.5 billion for education funding, Ballotpedia noted.
Horne said he is “hopeful” the Legislature will take action.
The superintendent told The Center Square he would like to see a portion of the proposition’s funds go directly to teachers rather than school districts.
The Arizona Legislature attempted to extend Proposition 123 this legislative session, but state elected officials were unable to reach an agreement.
As a result, the proposition expired in June.
