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The Illinois State Board of Education records data concerning faculty salary, retention, and attendance. This focus helps maintain a stable faculty, which is crucial for creating a conducive learning environment and furthering student success.
Wilmington Community Unit School District 209U, which includes Wilmington Middle School, had 87 full-time faculty members in the 2023-24 school year, with a student-teacher ratio of 17-to-1. The district serves 1,209 students across four schools.
The average salary for teachers within the district is $55,289, ranking it 587th out of 865 districts in the state for pay. About 66.8% of teachers in the district were absent 10 days or fewer in the 2023-24 school year, compared to 66% of teachers in the state.
In 2024, Illinois registered a teacher retention rate of almost 90%. Yet, around 91% of superintendents reported having a 'serious' problem teacher shortage problem. In total, almost 4,100 teaching positions remained vacant by the end of the year.
“They’re putting a substitute in there, that’s somebody with a four-year degree that’s not in teaching. They’re using a retired teacher…or worse than that, they’re canceling the class, putting the kids in other classrooms, putting them in study hall, but those are strategies we have to use if there’s no qualified teacher,” said Beth Crider, regional superintendent of Peoria County Regional Office of Education #48.
According to the Illinois State Board of Education, the Teacher Vacancy Grants Program provided $45 million annually in FY2024 and FY2025 to the 170 school districts with the greatest numbers of unfilled teaching positions.
