Dennisse Garcia never imagined she’d go from behind the lunch counter to the front of the classroom when she started working at Beecher Elementary School.

Hired first as a lunch lady, Garcia later applied for a position as a teacher’s aide. She’s now an English language specialist, working toward a master’s degree in elementary education.

“It’s something that I didn’t expect,” said Garcia, who was encouraged by her school administration to become a teacher. “I am glad, so glad, that they see my potential, and that I am willing to continue my education.”

Beecher 200U Superintendent Jack Gaham said supporting staff members who want to become teachers is one of the ways the district tries to boost teacher retention.

While some movement in a district’s teaching staff is normal, poor teacher retention hurts student achievement and hits districts financially, studies show.

One 2024 report estimates that it costs a district nearly $12,000 to to recruit, hire and train a new teacher.

Statewide, school districts retain, on average, 89.5% of teachers with some districts seeing retention rates as low as 58%, meaning nearly half of their teaching staff turns over each year on average.

Beecher 200U is one of the districts with the highest teacher retention rate – hitting 94.2% in 2025, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education.

The Will County district helps staff members through the process of earning teaching certifications and, in some cases, provides financial assistance for schooling.

Walking the halls in Beecher are a high school social studies teacher who began as a substitute and a junior high bilingual teacher who started as a secretary.

“They give you the opportunity, but it’s up to us to go to the next step,” Garcia said. “... It takes passion, it takes willingness and it takes the love for the community, and mostly the kids, because they are our future.”

Encouraging staff to become teachers not only fills vacancies, it also fosters a sense of belonging that makes those teachers more likely to stay long-term, Gaham said.

“It’s not like they’re ours, but there’s that appreciation,” he said. “[They see us] taking the extra step and trying to build [them] as a teacher, so there’s kind of that commitment on both ends.”

‘It all comes down to culture’

Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53 in Kankakee County saw teacher retention reach 88.4% in 2025, according to Illinois State Board of Education data.

The district was also one of 19 districts to achieve a 100% teacher attendance rate, which shows the percentage of teachers with fewer than 10 absences in a school year.

“The approach [to retention], because it’s so complex, it takes a complex solution as well, but it all comes down to culture,” Bourbonnais Superintendent Adam Ehrman said.

No organization, even Fortune 500 companies, achieves 100% retention on all hires, Ehrman said.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“We may not always be the right fit for somebody, and they may not be the right fit for us,” he said.

While retention looks at who stays and who leaves an organization, the numbers themselves don’t paint the whole picture.

Some changeover is to be expected, Ehrman said, but at the same time, very low numbers of retention would be an indicator that something is wrong in the culture or hiring practices of the organization.

“We want to keep our North Star student success and achievement,” he said.

Ehrman came to the district in 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and during the buildup to a teachers’ strike.

One thing he kept hearing at the time was that teachers wanted to feel seen, heard and appreciated.

That was the inspiration behind the district’s monthly teacher appreciation events.

“There’s no slice of pizza, there’s no cupcake or any tangible thing that’s ever going to absolutely show the value of how much you appreciate your staff member,” Ehrman said.

The events have become so popular that a neighboring school district reached out for tips on how to get them started.

“This is not going to cure all of your ills, but this is going to start a conversation about how you might be able to walk down that culture change,” he said.

Some unexpected reactions to the appreciation events have also come from students seeing their teachers enjoy a treat.

They have been heard saying, “I wish I was a teacher,” or “I wish I worked here!”

Seeing teachers in a positive work environment might, in the back of some children’s minds, be a convincing factor when deciding their career paths in the future, Ehrman said.

A closer look

Harvard School District 50, located in northern Illinois about 7 miles outside Wisconsin, saw a teacher retention rate of 82.4% last year.

One of the main recruitment strategies in the McHenry County district has been partnering with colleges and universities, like Illinois State University and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, to build strong student-teacher pathways.

“I think sometimes we’re forgotten because we’re so far out in Illinois,” said Vicki Larsen, assistant superintendent in Harvard School District 50.

While an 82.4% retention rate might be considered low, it includes teachers who were not renewed, those leaving for retirement or promotion, and visiting international teachers, who can only stay for three years.

“There are some people who don’t return because we’ve asked them not to return,” she said. “We really look at the difference between functional and dysfunctional retention.”

When looking closer, the district’s rate for high-performing certified staff desired for retention is in the 90% range, she said.

Harvard was allocated a three-year teacher vacancy grant from the state of Illinois in 2023, which it used to offer sign-on and retention bonuses.

The district currently has about 250 certified teachers on staff, and 14 jobs were posted for the upcoming school year, which is on the low end for openings in the last decade.

Across the state, districts participating in the teacher vacancy grant program hired more than 12,400 new teachers and retained almost 16,000 educators from 2023 to 2025, according to an Illinois State Board of Education report. The program also helped 2,300 staff members earn licensures or endorsements in high-need areas.

The grant has been helpful, Larsen said, but this past year was its final year.

Larsen said the district’s ongoing professional development, mentoring opportunities and tuition reimbursement for teachers are important in the long run.

“I think it’s really just making sure we’re offering those opportunities for teachers to grow and support them,” she said. “That’s what really retains teachers, I believe.”

Teacher’s market

Teacher retention for Dalzell School District 98 in Bureau County was at 58.3% for 2025, according to state data.

That placed Dalzell in the bottom five districts for teacher retention in the state.

Dalzell consists of just one school, Dalzell Grade School, which had an enrollment of about 38 students last year.

Currently, it employs five full-time teachers, one part-time kindergarten teacher, and other part-time support staff.

Interim Superintendent Jamie Craven said the district’s size can make it difficult to recruit teachers, but it is also a selling point for the right candidates.

“On one hand, I can see it being a challenge to attract talent, but if they are looking for that small, tight-knit community, then this is a wonderful place to work,” he said.

Pay scales are also always going to be a factor, Craven said.

Larger districts can generally offer a higher salary and more benefits, but small districts like Dalzell have their perks, too.

“We don’t have some of the discipline problems and challenges that other districts face,” Craven said. ”Again, it’s a very small, tight-knit community. Students are wonderful and get along. Parents are supportive."

Right now, the job market is “a teacher’s market,” where teachers have more freedom and mobility to choose where they want to work, Craven said.

That wasn’t always the case.

“I was looking for my first job in 1989, 1990, and lot of my peers, they didn’t get a job in their first year because the market was flooded with teachers coming out of teacher prep programs,” he recalled. “Today, we have a lot of unfilled positions across the state.”

Statewide teacher vacancies have started declining, with a 24% decrease from school year 2024-25 to school year 2025-26, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

Still, around 2,943 vacancies remained as of Oct. 1, 2025.

Districts end up unintentionally “poaching” talent from one another, Craven said, especially for hard-to-fill positions like special education, math and foreign language.

And while teachers, understandably, are looking at pay scales, the impact of a positive work environment cannot be overstated, he said.

“It doesn’t always come down to the bottom line, the bottom dollar,” Craven said. “The culture and climate of your building are the most important thing. If teachers aren’t feeling valued in your system, that opens the door for us to maybe look around, see what else might be out there.”