In 2025, school districts grappled with a wave of federal policy changes — on top of looming budget challenges — that impacted their approaches to staffing.
Sweeping student enrollment declines in public schools nationwide led some districts to initiate mass layoffs to help offset budget shortfalls. Those layoffs raised questions about whether widespread teacher shortages will continue to plague schools or if districts will have to reckon with the swath of uncertified teachers who were hired during the COVID-19 pandemic to address staffing needs.
The second Trump administration has also set federal policies that exacerbated staffing disruptions for some districts that rely on grow-your-own programs, hire international teachers through H-1B visa programs, or promote broader efforts to improve teacher diversity.
But while the way schools navigate staffing challenges at large may have shifted this year, some aspects of the issue remain the same — for instance, the hiring and retaining of enough special education teachers.
Here are three K-12 staffing trends that emerged or persisted for district leaders in 2025.
Declining student enrollment fuels staffing challenges
Public school systems nationwide have seen decreases in enrollment in recent years due to declining birthrates and increased competition from school choice initiatives, among other factors. Some districts, however, were able to delay the associated financial hurdles in the short term as school leaders were buoyed by a historic, one-time influx of federal pandemic relief funding to hire more teachers even as their enrollment dipped.
But now that the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief dollars have dried up, district leaders in the past year have had to take a hard look at their staffing through mass staff layoffs and reassignments or by eliminating a large number of open positions.
In October, for instance, Houston Independent School District laid off 160 uncertified teachers and 54 staff members “to align teachers with student enrollment.” The Texas district also reassigned 232 teachers to unfilled roles.
Florida’s Orange County Public Schools announced in September that the district was reassigning 116 teachers to new positions due to declining enrollment.
And ahead of the 2025-26 school year, the California Teachers Association reported that school districts across the state had laid off more than 1,200 staff members amid declining enrollment and the end of federal pandemic funds.
K-12 researchers have suggested that enrollment trends have led to a reversal in widespread teacher shortages.
But that “doesn’t mean that every spot has been filled. It’s still hard to recruit and fill positions in rural districts. High-poverty schools have always had a hard time. Math positions and special ed have always been more scarce,” Marguerite Roza, a research professor and director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, told K-12 Dive in August.
Special education shortages have yet to dissipate
Focus has remained steady on addressing educator shortages in consistently hard-to-staff areas like special education, science and math.
According to a July analysis by the Learning Policy Institute, 45 states reported teacher shortages in special education during the 2024-25 school year.
In September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released the findings of its yearlong investigation into the national special educator shortage. The federal civil rights panel found that the widespread shortage is leading to a lack of supports and services that are needed to help the growing population of students with disabilities thrive in schools.
The findings were released just a couple of months before the 50th anniversary of the landmark federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The historic legislation, signed into law on Nov. 29, 1975, guaranteed that students with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education nationwide.
Reflecting on IDEA’s big anniversary, educators and researchers said they’re still hopeful about several evolving and innovative approaches to recruiting and retaining more special education teachers. Those solutions include:
- Paying special educators more than general education teachers.
- Offering targeted training and professional development for paraprofessionals, school administrators and prospective special educators.
- Developing special education teacher pipelines through grow-your-own programs.
At the same time, teacher preparation experts have expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s goal to downsize and eventually eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — especially when it comes to ongoing special educator shortages.
President Donald Trump, for instance, proposed in his fiscal year 2026 budget that IDEA Part D personnel development grants be zeroed out and that newly allocated funds go to IDEA Part B programs through a single state block grant program.
Trump’s attempt to drastically reduce the number of staff in the Education Department’s Office of Special Education Programs during the recent federal government shutdown also raised red flags among advocates. Their chief concern: that it would become very difficult to administer and oversee federal grants like IDEA Part D that help address special educator shortages.
The state block grant consolidation proposal, though unpopular among Congressional lawmakers, would particularly harm the ability of teacher prep programs to train high-quality special education teachers, said advocates and experts.
Trump policies target several K-12 staffing approaches
Beyond efforts to dismantle the Education Department, the Trump administration targeted other aspects of K-12 staffing solutions through legal challenges, policy changes and even sudden grant cancellations.
Initiatives formed or embraced by school districts in recent years to improve teacher diversity are among those that found themselves under fire from the federal government. For instance, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Minneapolis Public Schools on Dec. 9 over its teacher union agreement, which includes initiatives to recruit and retain Black male educators.
In February, the Education Department announced it had slashed $600 million in “divisive” teacher training grants, specifically through the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant Program. The department said at the time that those cuts were made to grant programs that “included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race.”
Advocates for the programs said initiatives looking to boost teacher diversity were hit particularly hard by the cuts.
The shifting anti-DEI policy and legal landscape has also led some experts to warn districts and states to be more cautious when promoting teacher diversity efforts.
School districts relying on the ability to hire international teachers through the H-1B visa program for hard-to-fill roles are also on shaky ground after Trump announced in September that there will be a $100,000 fee for employers looking to hire new H-1B employees. That includes schools.
During fiscal year 2025, the National Education Association found that over 500 K-12 public school districts employed about 2,300 H-1B visa holders.
The H-1B visa proclamation has led to several lawsuits claiming that the $100,000 fee is unlawful and would consequently harm public schools.