Patrick Kearney is a middle school band director who has taught in Iowa for 35 years. This post first appeared on his WordPress blog on July 27.

Dear Iowa,

A couple of days ago a friend of mine shared that there were 40 unfilled music teaching positions in Iowa right now. That’s a lot of teaching jobs that are not filled in late July. The next day another friend shared that one of the open jobs is the vocal music position at Atlantic High School. Atlantic has a long tradition as an outstanding music program in Iowa. It appears that they’ve been trying to fill this position all summer without success and are trying to figure out how to offer any vocal music at this point.

This news comes on the heels of an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette detailing the challenges facing the Cedar Rapids school district’s music programs.

As a music teacher, these stories all concern me. I believe in the power of music education, and Iowa has a long history of great school music programs. While music education is a big concern to me, it led me to look into how many total teaching jobs have gone unfilled in Iowa.