LIBERTY COUNTY, Ga. () — Many school districts are struggling to fill empty teacher positions, and the Liberty County School System(LCSS) is feeling the effects as one of those schools.

LCSS officials told that this school year alone, 45 teachers have left. Now they are working to find replacements. This is especially important since ESPLOST passed last week allowing the construction of a new school.

“We have about 675 teachers,” Director of Human Resources Michele Dasher said.  “And right now, we have 62 vacancies.”

Dasher said the teacher shortage has been impacting the system for years, with an average of 100 open spots each year.

“With us being tied to Fort Stewart, we do lose about 20% of our teachers to military moves,” she said. “We also usually have about 25% of our teachers who are retiring as well.”

System officials told that they have also seen a significant drop in teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dasher said they are now forced to play a game of “catch up.”

Both factors are causing classroom sizes and the need for substitute teachers to increase.

“We have had shortages with substitute teachers, which makes the principals have to be creative of who is going to recover in those classes when we can’t find substitute teachers,” Dasher said.

She continued, “We also have tried something new with our technology department. They are actually implementing a TV that will record and also play at the same time in another classroom. We’re allowing that to bridge that instructional time in the classroom.”

In order to win this game of catch up, Dasher said it starts with keeping teachers inside of the classrooms.

“We do have retention bonuses that we’ve been able to give to our staff over the last few years. Typically, we’d been able to give two a year,” she said.

She adds they are also looking into higher salaries.

“We are constantly looking at our salaries, how we can improve them for the staff and for teachers,” Dasher said. “So that is something that we look at to increase and usually we’re able to increase that every year just to stay competitive in the market. We also have been able to offer signing bonuses for new teachers coming in.”

is told the system has been attending job fairs regularly to encourage more teachers to get on board. They are also hosting another hiring event for all positions on May 3 at the Liberty County Board of Education from 9-11 a.m.