Fewer teachers left Roanoke classrooms during the 2007-08 school year than in other recent years, according to the city school system.

Roanoke lost 155 teachers in the school year that ended in June, roughly 13 percent of its teaching corps. That's fewer than the 235 teachers who left during the 2006-07 school year, but it's still too high for Superintendent Rita Bishop, who aims to be closer to an 8 percent turnover rate. Human resources director Billie Kay Wingfield was more ambitious. "I'd like to get to 5 percent," she said.

Roanoke has struggled with teacher turnover in recent years. As an ever-larger number of teachers reaches retirement age and as some younger teachers decide that teaching in the city is not for them, school officials have scrambled to find enough teachers in time for the first day of school.

Last year Roanoke schools were short 14 teachers about a week before the start of classes. Wingfield said the district was so desperate that officials had to call five recently retired teachers and ask them to come back.

"We were able to fill those positions for the school year," she said.

Bishop said earlier this week that schools were fully staffed for Tuesday's opening, although the district was still looking for two special-education teachers.

A year ago, the school system estimated that 175 teachers had left the district in 2006-07, but the school system has since adjusted that figure upward. School officials could not explain the discrepancy.

About 227 teachers left their classrooms during the 2005-06 academic year, roughly one out of every five teachers. In the past couple of years, many of the teachers who left said they were unhappy with the school system's administration.

That's not the case this year, according to Latasha Suggs, a teacher at Monterey Elementary and co-president of the Roanoke Education Association.

"Of course you always are going to have teachers leaving," she said in an interview last week. "The teachers that I personally know of that are leaving the school system aren't leaving because of the central administration."

Of the 155 teachers who left this school year, 34 retired, 24 took a job elsewhere, 18 left because of performance reasons and 79 left to follow a spouse, go to graduate school, move to a different city or for other reasons.

"There are hundreds of reasons for that being the way it is," Bishop said.

The Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy, a program for students with discipline problems, saw the highest turnover rate, at 28 percent. The second highest turnover rate was at William Ruffner Middle School, which lost 23 percent of its teachers. The lowest turnover rates were at Wasena (none), Grandin Court (none) and Westside elementary schools (2.2 percent).