As it prepares to open its schools for students this week, the Bowling Green Independent School District will do so with almost every one of its teaching positions filled.

But that doesn’t mean the district hasn’t been touched by a teacher shortage affecting schools across Kentucky.

“We’re feeling it,” said Ken May, director of personnel for the district.

In recent years, “We have been seeing the pool of applicants for our positions drop,” May said, attributing the phenomenon to a mix of growing demands on teachers, relatively low pay in exchange for the high amount of education investment required and retirement woes given Kentucky’s public pension crisis.

As a result, fewer young people are deciding to go into the profession in favor of better-paying careers. During the 2011-12 school year, for example, the district had 62 student teachers, May said. By last school year, that number had dropped to 36.

“It’s just not as attractive of a profession as it once was,” May said.

According to Kentucky Teacher, a publication of the Kentucky Department of Education, thousands of teaching positions remain open across the state as the start of the school year approaches. Since Jan. 1, almost 5,000 vacancies have been listed on the Kentucky Educator Placement Service maintained by the Kentucky Department of Education.

Despite multiple requests, the Daily News did not receive a response from Warren County Public Schools for this story. An online search of the Kentucky Educator Placement Service for the district showed 58 teaching job postings over a 120-day period, but the current status of those vacancies was not immediately known.

That’s in step with a national trend. According to Kentucky Teacher, a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute said that a surplus of teachers in 2011-12 has been swallowed up by growing demand, and the gap is expected to continue growing.

In the coming months, the Kentucky Department of Education will be taking action to address the issue through a recruitment initiative called Go Teach Kentucky.

The effort will focus on three recruitment avenues, including high school career pathways, actively recruiting college students and prospective college students into education programs and raising awareness about alternative teacher certification routes, according to Kentucky Teacher.

While May supports those efforts, he also believes the solution must be more fundamental: making teaching more lucrative.

“I think we’ve got to start paying our teachers what they should be making,” he said.