positions aren t teacher positions, they will often be bus drivers in particular. districts are desperate for bus drivers and para professionals. it s a little difficult to say there is a nationwide teacher shortage because every district is a little different and often, when you drill down it s a lack of being able to fill open positions that they might be adding because of an increase in funding pandemic funding, a lot of districts didn t lose as much money as they thought during the pandemic and then there was a big infusion of federal money. so some of these open positions are in addition to what they might have had before. we should note that this has been an alarming trend that s predated covid-19. it s only been exacerbated really and brought to the forefront since the pandemic began. yeah, i think the problem of teacher pay lagging compared to the rest of the economy is