Stop the Teacher Turnover Spiral

The Core Problems

Teacher retention is a core performance and sustainability issue, not an HR side quest.
When the job’s demands outstrip the supports, time, and conditions teachers need to succeed, schools lose people, momentum, and instructional coherence—then spend the next year rebuilding instead of improving.
Turnover is costly in dollars, capacity, and learning—at the same time.
Every resignation triggers recruiting/onboarding costs and vacancies, but the bigger hit is lost expertise and leadership bandwidth: principals and central office get pulled into constant triage, and students experience uneven instruction and disrupted relationships.
The system is unintentionally engineered to burn people out and widen gaps.
High-need schools carry the heaviest load and the highest churn, which accelerates stress, weakens culture, and undermines equity goals—creating a cycle districts can’t “train their way out of” without redesigning conditions.

The TRM identifies three key levers to respect what the evidence finds:

Lever 1: Reducing demands decreases exhaustion and increases retention

Lever 2: Increasing resources produces more efficacy/engagement and increases retention

Lever 3: Strenghtening adult SEL skills reduces social threats, increases coping skills, decreases burnout, and increases cohesion

Start with shared understanding and a common language.
We begin with a workshop that translates the model into your context—clarifying what “demands,” “resources,” and “adult SEL climate” look like in your schools, and aligning leaders on a practical definition of “fix the system, the people stay.”

Move from insight to action through data-driven PDSA cycles.
Next, we partner with your team in retention consulting to identify the highest-leverage pressure points, choose a small set of measurable changes across the three levers, and run disciplined PDSA cycles—so retention improves through tested system redesign, not one-off initiatives.
Build leader capability so the changes stick.
Finally, we provide executive coaching to principals and central office leaders to strengthen the leadership behaviors required to sustain the levers—protecting time, reducing initiative overload, building trust and conflict capacity, and reinforcing the adult SEL climate that makes retention gains durable.

From burnout management to a system of well-being.
As you reduce key demands, increase usable resources, and strengthen the adult SEL climate, teacher well-being shifts from “surviving the week” to sustainable energy and efficacy—making staying feel realistic again. With a more doable job and a healthier adult culture, schools experience fewer “reset cycles” each year—teams keep expertise, routines stabilize, and leaders spend less time plugging holes and more time improving teaching and learning. Instead of chasing the program of the month, leaders gain a practical, data-driven way to continuously rebalance demands and resources and protect adult climate—creating conditions where retention improves because the system is designed to keep people.

Order Now and be the leader whose teachers choose to stay.

Questions? Email info@brasstacksinnovations.com