Staffed Up is a monthly series examining school staffing best practices and solutions for teacher recruitment and retention.
Shrinking enrollment and teacher shortages in hard-to-fill roles are ongoing challenges in many school districts nationwide, but that’s not the case for Western Maricopa Education Center.
The Arizona public school district offers 43 career and technical education programs across six campuses in the nearly 3,900 square miles of Western Maricopa County, which is part of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
West-MEC partners with 15 public school districts and two charter districts to offer CTE courses to the districts’ high school students at those student's assigned schools. Those courses are taught in-house by the partnering district’s own staff. Partnering districts can also send their students to take CTE classes at one of six West-MEC campuses for 2.5 hours a day, said Ryan French, West-MEC’s assistant superintendent for business and operations.
The district offers a wide range of CTE programs, including in the fields of artificial intelligence, cosmetology, IT security, nursing, paralegal and veterinary science.
Student demand is surpassing the number of seats available for classes at West-MEC’s six campuses, which select its students through an application process, said French. West-MEC’s six campuses enrolled about 3,000 students this school year, he said, while 6,000 students typically apply every year for West-MEC’s CTE programs.
“We still have seen a significant demand for programs, and we’re trying to expand as fast as we can to help meet those needs,” French said.
West-MEC also employs about 100 CTE instructors on its campuses, French said, and there are almost zero vacancies for those roles this year. The district’s CTE teacher retention rate is around 90%, he added. As the district continues to increase its course offerings, he said, it plans to have filled an additional 18 CTE instructional roles by the 2027-28 school year.
The CTE staffing challenge
The district is uniquely well-positioned compared to other schools nationwide, as federal data has shown persistent challenges with CTE staffing.
For instance, 31% of public schools reported difficulties with hiring for open CTE teaching positions during the 2020-21 school year, according to the most recently available survey data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. For the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years, 29 states and the District of Columbia reported they experienced a CTE teacher shortage, Education Department data shows.
A common reason districts struggle to recruit and retain CTE instructors is that they can’t keep up with competitive industry salaries, French said. While West-MEC also cannot offer comparable industry wages to its CTE teachers, he said, the district is paying “significantly higher than a normal teaching wage.”
The average teacher salary at West-MEC was $78,823 in fiscal year 2025 compared to Arizona's average pay for all teachers of $65,613 in the same fiscal year. However, West-MEC’s average wages have since grown to $85,247 for FY27.
West-MEC receives supplemental state funds based on student enrollment to help cover its competitive teacher pay in addition to supporting its partnering districts with student counseling services and professional development, French said.
Tapping into public support
Arizona’s public education system, more broadly, is not getting a lot of support from the state as its legislature has pushed for school choice policies, such as the statewide universal school choice program known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, French said. Since FY20, Arizona’s public school enrollment has dropped 6.2% — or by 55,054 students — to 839,126 in FY25.
“School districts have a tough time right now, but somehow, some way, CTE kind of stands on its own right now,” French said. “We have a lot of support from both sides of the aisle when it comes to CTE.”
He added that West-MEC is trying to tap into that local public support for CTE and momentum as the district continues to expand. Last November, voters approved a $415 million bond to help the district build more campuses in high-demand fields like healthcare, technology and welding, particularly as student interest in its CTE programs surges.
It’s important to invest in staffing in order to have high-quality CTE programs, French said. For other school districts and states looking to boost their CTE enrollment, build out their programs and improve staffing, he advises those leaders to not “be afraid to think outside the box” and take advantage of the growing public support for CTE programs.
“If the answer to the question is ‘We’ve always done it that way,’ then you know you have some work to do,” French said, adding that school leaders can also look to other local and national innovative CTE programs. From there, he said, leaders can compare the differences and similarities their district may have with those programs — and “maybe you’re closer to that model than you think.”
