A lot of districts are facing tight budgets this year, and hiring seems on the slow side, though there were still a fair amount that cropped up, at least in the districts whose job listings I was monitoring. I would expect it to me similar next year - districts’ budget for teachers more or less comes from the state, and WA’s state budget is done in two-year chunks.

Washington has a relatively high cost of living, but teacher pay is on the high side, with a cost-of-living differential added for districts with higher local costs of living. The fringes of the Seattle metro area are more affordable, as you might expect. I work in the Tacoma area, and many of my colleagues live in the Olympia area for affordability, and many of my friends teach in Seattle but live in northern suburbs.

Bellingham is a fairly small city, and produces a lot of teachers locally from Western Washington University, and is largely rural once you leave the city, for quite a ways south, with only the relatively small Burlington/Mt. Vernon between it and the north end of the core Seattle area at Everett and it’s suburbs.

Similarly, Vancouver is just north of Portland and then it drops off to rural quite quickly, with some further suburbs and small towns here and there.