A chronic shortage of special education teachers exists throughout our nation and the state of Texas. Most special education teachers leave their positions within their first five years of teaching and the problem of teacher shortages in the field of special education exists throughout South Texas. Texas A&M University-Kingsville, in collaboration with the Texas Education Agency and Region II Education Service Center, has recently completed a retention study of south Texas special education teachers. The survey and focus group information in this study describe the demographic and background characteristics of the 230 retained (5 or more years of teaching) teachers who responded. The results provided through the survey of South Texas special education teachers are, for the most part, consistent with the limited reports of long-staying special education teacher's characteristics across the nation. Most of the teachers surveyed within this study report being Caucasian, holding Bachelor's degrees, and being over the age of thirty. While this study showed descriptive characteristics of special education teachers working within Regional Education Service Center 2, in South Texas, no attempt was made to determine if a correlation between demographic indicators and retention exists. However, this study remains significant because it attempts to describe personal and demographic characteristics of retained special education teachers, the level of their retention within the teaching field and emphasizes the need for further research in this area. (Contains 1 table.)