California’s Teacher Exodus: A Crisis in the Public School System

California’s public school system is facing an unprecedented crisis as teachers leave their positions at an alarming rate, a trend not seen in modern state history.

This exodus is not primarily due to student behavior, test scores, or even the lingering effects of the pandemic.

Instead, it stems from a financial structure that has been engineered to fail, with those responsible for the blueprints fully aware of the impending consequences once funding ran out.

Classrooms across the state are being abandoned midyear, and school districts are declaring emergencies as parents discover their children’s teachers have vanished, replaced by substitutes who also leave within weeks due to unsustainable pay.

Megan Wright, an investigative journalist, emphasizes the importance of understanding the financial intricacies behind this crisis.

She encourages viewers to share their experiences with teacher shortages, aiming to document the reality that is often overlooked by mainstream media.

The Financial Collapse of School Districts

California’s school districts are collapsing financially, not due to a sudden crisis but as a result of a decade-long funding scheme orchestrated at the state level.

This scheme created an illusion of investment while systematically undermining districts’ ability to retain staff.

The mechanics of this collapse are coldly mathematical.

Pension costs have skyrocketed, healthcare premiums have increased significantly, and enrollment-based funding formulas have locked districts into a destructive cycle.

As enrollment declines, districts receive less funding, which leads to staff cuts, making schools less attractive, resulting in even more students leaving.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration inherited this flawed structure and exacerbated it by utilizing temporary federal pandemic funds that were always set to expire, leaving districts with multi-year salary commitments they can no longer support.

This situation is not merely a political issue; it is a matter of fiscal architecture, incentive design, and the harsh reality of who bears the burden when financial models fail.

The Timeline of Events

To understand the collapse, it is crucial to look back at the timeline of events that led to this crisis.

In 2012, California voters passed Proposition 30, which temporarily raised taxes to fund schools following the Great Recession.

This influx of money stabilized districts but came with conditions.

The state shifted to a new funding formula known as the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which allocated funds primarily based on enrollment numbers, with additional support for low-income students, English learners, and foster youth.

On paper, this seemed progressive, but it was a ticking time bomb.

California’s birth rate had already begun to decline, and enrollment started dropping statewide in 2014, continuing to do so year after year.

With fewer students, districts automatically received less funding each year.

However, teacher contracts, pension obligations, and healthcare costs do not decrease with enrollment; they rise annually due to union agreements and state mandates.

In 2019, Governor Newsom took office, pledging historic investments in education.

To his credit, he pushed through increases, with the state budget for K-12 education reaching nearly $94 billion by the 2019-2020 school year, a record high.

However, most of this new funding was restricted to specific programs and could not be used to raise base teacher salaries or hire permanent staff.

Simultaneously, the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) announced that employer contribution rates would continue to climb.

From 2019, districts paid 16.2% of every teacher’s salary into CalSTRS, which increased to 19.1% by 2023.

For a mid-sized district employing 1,000 teachers at an average salary of $75,000, this three-point increase translated to an additional $2.2 million per year solely for pension contributions.

The Impact of Health Care Costs

In addition to rising pension costs, California mandates that school districts provide health benefits to employees.

During this period, the cost of these benefits rose by an average of 6% to 8% annually.

A teacher hired in 2015 might have cost the district a total of $85,000, including salary and benefits.

By 2023, that same teacher would cost the district closer to $100,000 due to escalating pension and healthcare expenses, with the teacher seeing no corresponding raise.

This widening gap between costs and salaries has become a silent killer of teacher retention.

The Pandemic’s Temporary Relief

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, schools closed, and the federal government provided emergency funding.

California received approximately $27 billion in federal pandemic relief for K-12 schools, distributed in waves through 2021 and 2022.

While this funding was a lifeline, it came with an expiration date.

The U.S.Department of Education specified that these were one-time emergency funds intended for temporary needs, not for hiring permanent staff or committing to recurring expenses.

Despite these warnings, many districts, under pressure from unions and parents to reduce class sizes and address learning loss, used federal funds to hire permanent teachers.

This decision created long-term commitments with short-term money, setting the stage for future financial disaster.

In 2021, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 130, which pressured districts to maintain or increase staffing levels as a condition for receiving certain state funds.

While the intention was to prevent layoffs during a crisis, it inadvertently created a fiscal trap, encouraging districts to hire more staff even as enrollment continued to decline.

The Reality of Declining Enrollment

Between 2020 and 2023, California’s K-12 enrollment dropped by approximately 375,000 students.

This loss is equivalent to losing every single student in both the San Francisco Unified and Oakland Unified school districts combined twice over.

Despite this decline, many districts expanded their staff due to the availability of federal funds.

By spring 2023, the reality of the situation began to surface.

Federal funds were running dry, and districts projected catastrophic budget gaps for the 2024-2025 school year.

The temporary money that had been supporting teacher salaries was disappearing, while enrollment continued to fall, leading to declining state funding.

Pension and healthcare costs were still rising, and California’s state budget was suddenly in deficit, with a projected shortfall of nearly $32 billion.

The Consequences for School Districts

To illustrate the impact of these financial pressures, consider the Oakland Unified School District, which serves around 35,000 students.

In spring 2023, the district projected a budget deficit of $95 million over three years.

To close this gap, the board voted to close multiple schools and eliminate hundreds of positions, including teachers, counselors, and librarians.

In May 2023, the teachers’ union went on strike for seven days, but the district could not meet the union’s demands, leading to layoffs.

By fall 2024, Oakland Unified issued pink slips to over 200 certificated staff, meaning more than 200 credentialed teachers and support professionals lost their jobs.

Moving south to Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest district in the nation, which serves around 420,000 students, the situation is similarly dire.

LAUSD’s enrollment has dropped by roughly 200,000 students since its peak in the late 1990s.

Despite this decline, the district employed about 26,000 teachers as of 2023, only slightly fewer than at its enrollment peak.

In early 2024, LAUSD projected a budget shortfall exceeding half a billion dollars within two years, prompting plans for significant layoffs.

By late 2024, hundreds of teachers received preliminary layoff notices, and many opted for early retirement or left for better-paying jobs outside education.

The district’s own data indicated over 500 teaching positions were vacant or filled by substitutes as of October 2024, resulting in 1,500 classrooms without a stable, permanent teacher.

The Growing Class Sizes and Workload

As teachers are laid off or positions remain unfilled, class sizes have increased dramatically.

A classroom that once had 22 students can now have 35.

High schools that previously offered five sections of sophomore English may now only offer three, causing larger class sizes.

Teachers who remain are overwhelmed with increased workloads, making grading and planning nearly impossible.

Individualized attention for students diminishes, leading to declining test scores and rising parent complaints.

As schools struggle to maintain their reputations, families who can afford it turn to private schools or move to neighboring districts with better student-to-teacher ratios.

This further exacerbates the problem, as declining enrollment leads to even less funding and necessitates more cuts.

The Teacher Exodus

As conditions worsen, teachers who remain in these struggling districts begin to seek employment elsewhere.

Why would anyone stay in a district that is cutting staff, increasing workloads, freezing pay, and offering no path forward?

Many teachers begin applying to suburban districts with stable enrollments or leave education entirely for better-paying jobs in other sectors.

This creates a cycle where the district cannot recruit replacements, and word spreads among new teaching graduates to avoid struggling districts.

The vacancy rate climbs, and long-term substitutes, often unqualified and poorly paid, rotate through classrooms, resulting in further declines in student outcomes.

The Regulatory Framework and Its Impact

California’s education code and various legislative mandates have created a rigid framework that has contributed to the current crisis.

Proposition 98, passed in 1988, guarantees schools a minimum percentage of the state’s general fund, roughly 40%.

While this sounds protective, it does not ensure adequacy; it simply guarantees a percentage of whatever revenue the state collects.

When state revenues decline, school funding automatically decreases.

California’s tax base, heavily reliant on capital gains and high-income earners, is volatile.

In boom years, funding is abundant; in downturns, it disappears, leaving districts with multi-year budget commitments that cannot flex.

When a district approaches insolvency, the county office of education intervenes, and the state can impose a trustee to take control from the elected board, as seen in Oakland Unified.

This trustee’s primary responsibility is to balance the budget, which often means cuts, school closures, and layoffs, without regard for educational quality.

This results in austerity measures driven by legal requirements rather than educational goals.

The Role of Governor Newsom

As the crisis deepens, Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has offered temporary solutions rather than long-term fixes.

In 2023, he proposed one-time funding to help districts manage the impending fiscal cliff, but the amount was insufficient to address the collective shortfall across districts, which is measured in billions.

While the governor has positioned himself as an education champion, citing California’s education budget as the largest in state history, this claim is misleading.

The raw budget size is irrelevant if it does not translate into teacher retention, smaller class sizes, and stable schools.

Under Newsom’s leadership from 2019 to 2025, California has experienced the worst teacher shortage in modern memory, the highest number of school closures in decades, and a collapse in public confidence in the education system.

The governor cannot claim credit for investment without acknowledging the negative outcomes resulting from his policies.

He inherited a broken funding model and had the opportunity to fix it during years of budget surpluses but chose to prioritize other initiatives instead.

The Long-Term Consequences

If California cannot stabilize school staffing, the long-term economic and social consequences will far exceed the current budget crisis.

As teachers leave, class sizes grow, student outcomes decline, graduation rates fall, and college readiness diminishes.

The pipeline of educated workers will dry up, leading businesses to struggle to find qualified employees.

Companies may relocate to states with better education systems, further shrinking California’s tax revenues and exacerbating the budget shortfall.

This is not a one-year problem; it represents a generational collapse in the state’s human capital.

The equity implications are equally alarming.

The districts suffering the most are predominantly those serving low-income students and students of color.

Wealthy suburban districts, with stable enrollment and local funding sources, are weathering the storm, while urban and rural districts face severe cuts.

The achievement gap, which California has claimed to prioritize closing, is widening into a chasm, depriving students in cities like Oakland, Fresno, and San Bernardino of access to qualified teachers.

The Role of Charter Schools

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated, often escape some of the financial pressures faced by traditional districts.

They typically do not participate in the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) and can hire and fire more flexibly.

As traditional districts collapse, parents are increasingly turning to charters, leading to enrollment shifts that drain resources from traditional schools.

This dynamic further exacerbates the challenges faced by struggling districts, as they lose funding while charters expand.

The Path Forward

Despite the challenges, solutions exist that are being ignored.

California could shift to a funding model that accounts for actual costs rather than just enrollment numbers.

This would involve considering factors such as teacher experience, regional cost of living, facility age, and special education populations.

While politically difficult, such reforms are possible.

The state could create a teacher salary stabilization fund, a reserve specifically for education, funded during surplus years to cushion districts during downturns.

This would require foresight and discipline, which California has lacked.

Additionally, reforms to CalSTRS could be implemented to increase employee and state contributions or adjust benefit formulas for new hires.

Confronting the teachers’ unions on this issue would be politically toxic, but it is necessary for long-term sustainability.

California could also expedite credentialing pathways to get qualified professionals into classrooms more quickly.

Streamlining the process would help address immediate staffing shortages, but progress has been slow and insufficient.

Finally, the state could commit to predictable, flexible education funding increases that allow districts to plan and invest in their staff.

This would require either broad-based tax increases or a significant reprioritization of state spending, both of which are politically sensitive issues.

Instead, the current approach consists of press releases, task forces, and temporary patches while the educational system continues to deteriorate.

Conclusion

California’s public school system is at a critical juncture, facing a teacher exodus driven by financial mismanagement and systemic failures.

The consequences of this crisis extend beyond the classroom, threatening the state’s long-term economic and social stability.

As the situation continues to unfold, it is essential for policymakers to recognize the urgency of the issue and take meaningful action to address the underlying problems.

Without significant reforms, the cycle of decline will persist, leaving generations of students without the education they deserve.

The time for change is now, and the future of California’s education system depends on it.