Across the country, public education faces a troubling paradox. As students’ needs grow more complex and the labor market demands deeper skillsets, federal and state budgets are tightening and teachers are leaving their classrooms.
As a result, districts are being asked to do more with less. According to the Learning Policy Institute, more than 411,000 teaching positions across the U.S. remain unfilled or are staffed by educators without full certification.
That’s one in eight classrooms where students may not receive the instruction they deserve. This is more than a funding issue. It’s a student equity issue. It’s a workforce sustainability issue. And it’s a national competitiveness issue.
Education should be treated not as a line item to trim but as part of the country’s fundamental infrastructure, like highways, power grids and pipelines. This infrastructure needs not only maintenance but continuous improvement.
As someone who immigrated to the U.S. from India and benefited from public education systems in both countries, I see clearly how vital schools are to the future of America’s economy, democracy and shared opportunity.
Expanding visions
Fortunately, amid the current landscape of scarcity, I’ve met district leaders who aren’t shrinking their vision—they’re expanding it.
They’re thinking beyond immediate budget cuts and teacher shortages and are considering the long-term economic and social consequences of divestment from education. They’re investing in a future where, for example, they embrace a synchronous virtual teaching model that allows them to find experienced and qualified teachers anywhere and bring them into classrooms via Zoom.
One such leader is Michele Stephens, the director of human resources in Georgia’s Rockdale County Public Schools, where teacher vacancies are “frustrating for everybody in the building.” When faced with the choice of hiring a substitute who is “willing to be there with our kids but doesn’t have the content knowledge,” she said she prefers “a remote teacher who can support our students and teach them the curriculum.”
With this approach to staffing, she pointed out, “Your pool of applicants opens up so much. It opens you up to the entire United States.”
With the support of a paraprofessional in each classroom, virtual teaching allows schools to use a combination of in-person observation and data analytics to understand what’s happening with every student in the classroom.
As Dr. David Lawrence, superintendent of Dayton Public Schools, said, “The teacher shortage is not just a staffing issue. It’s an equity issue.” With the district losing more than 250 teachers a year, Dr. Lawrence said, “We had to stop the bleeding.”
The virtual teachers Dayton hired helped students improve by 12.83 points on the 2025 Ohio State Test for Algebra I, outperforming classrooms staffed with long-term substitutes by more than 4 points. While the new teaching model took some getting used to, Lawrence said, “Our principals, our union, our staff—once they saw how it worked, they embraced it.”
Changing trajectories
No matter what the data says, the most successful education leaders understand that human connection will always be the heart of effective teaching.
I remember visiting a special education class that was staffed by a teacher on the screen and a paraprofessional in the classroom. As the class was breaking for lunch, two of the students went up to the screen and kissed the teacher—a powerful reminder that virtual teaching can feel local and personal.
The current budget crisis facing American public schools is undeniably challenging, but the superintendents who are succeeding are those who can lead not just for the present but for five or 10 years in the future. The future is a world in which schools will call on experts from around the world to provide the best educational experiences for students.
It demands leaders like Dr. Cassandra Barker, deputy superintendent of teaching and learning in the Lancaster Independent School District, who commit to new models of teaching and learning. When 86% of first-time test-takers scored “proficient” in biology classrooms led by virtual teachers, Barker said that virtual teaching “has changed the trajectory of our students.”
The district leaders who are succeeding in this moment share a common belief: that every student deserves an amazing teacher who is certified, who is qualified, and who knows how to educate and excite them. I believe the future of learning is a hybrid model that combines in-person and virtual instruction. T
his isn’t just a pandemic-era stopgap—it’s a strategic response to both budget constraints and the reality of how work and learning happen in the modern world. We live in a hybrid world, and as Barker said, hybrid instruction “exposes our students to what could be next.”
In the face of dire budget situations, innovative leaders like Barker, Lawrence and Stephens are finding ways to bring the best teachers to students, no matter where the teachers happens to live.
