Atlanta Public Schools and Cobb County School District said they are 99% staffed and ready for the first day of school.

ATLANTA — With the first day of school right around the corner, school districts are making sure they have teachers prepared for the return of students.  

Some districts, however, are doing better than others.  Atlanta Public Schools and Cobb County School District said they are 99% staffed and ready for the first day of school, but several other districts have plenty of vacancies they are working to fill.

“For the eighth year in a row we’re starting the school year off with less than 1% of our teacher vacancies being filled. We are 99% ready for day 1,” Atlanta Public Schools HR director Nicole Lawson said.  

Lawson said their efforts of continuously hiring staff has paid off and with the first day of school less than two weeks away, APS only has 27 teachers vacancies which they are confident they will fill before school starts.  

“For the past eight years we started the school year off with less than 10 -- with the exception of last year. We started the school year with 41 vacancies, but that was coming off probably our most trying year as it relates to recruitment," Lawson said. "This year we listen to teachers adjusted our strategies and so far we’re back on track where we were previously."

But not all districts are doing that well. DeKalb County Schools has more than 1,000 vacancies and about 500 of them are for teachers.

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“We’ve hired over 600 teachers, so while we still need more, just be aware, that we have done a fabulous job recruiting and marketing in the district,” said DeKalb County Schools, Human Resources Director Tekshia Ward-Smith.

Ward-Smith said their workforce challenges are partly due to teachers leaving the industry. 

“We continue to find that individuals are moving on to other professions, so we have to be creative in terms of how we staff," she said. "As I stated, I want to reassure our parents and our stakeholders -- day 1 we are tagging our instructional specialist. We have a number of instructional specialists who are in the school and in the district but not in the classroom."

DeKalb schools said instructional specialists and substitutes will help cover classes until the district finds permanent teachers. Even though APS is fully staffed, they will hold has job fair this weekend for substitutes.