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As pandemic continues, schools scramble to find substitute teachers, other workers
The past several months have been challenging for Washington County School District.
COVID-19 cases started spiking in December as the highly-contagious omicron variant spread and with more workers out sick, the district scrambled to find enough substitutes. Employees filled in for their ill colleagues, often doubling their workloads.
During omicron’s peak in the first half of January, “it was a nightmare,” said Steven Dunham, the district’s director of communications. He said ESS, an outside company that finds substitute teachers for the district, has done a tremendous job but more fill-ins were still needed.
“We had some bleak days,” Dunham said. “We had many days where there were unfilled positions in our schools. Teachers were covering, paraeducators were covering, administrators were covering. It was a challenge. January was brutal.”
The pandemic, as well as broader labor shortages, have caused Utah schools around the state to struggle to find enough substitutes to fill in for teachers and other staff members, including cafeteria workers, custodians, office staffers and bus drivers. Sometimes, they can’t find enough people to cover all the jobs.
At one point, every Washington County district employee who had a commercial driver’s license was driving a bus, including mechanics, according to Dunham.
“We had to notify parents that buses would be upwards of an hour to an hour and a half late because we had bus drivers who would finish a route, then double back to cover a second route and then they could move on to the next school and then they could do those routes,” he said. “They were doing two or three routes.”
Dunham said the district is in a much more “normal” situation now than it was a month ago.
“We had some bleak days. We had many days where there were unfilled positions in our schools.”
Steven Dunham, Washington County School District director of communications
In Canyons School District, the fill rate for substitute positions hovers around 80% now. It was a different story last month.
“In mid-January, we came as close to our tipping point as I have ever seen in my 13 years working in public education,” Jeff Haney, director of communications, said in an email. “It was simply not sustainable. During the height of the omicron surge, we didn’t have enough workers to ‘do school.’ We didn’t have enough bus drivers to transport students, teachers to provide instruction, paraeducators to give support to educators and students, custodians to clean the schools, or lunchroom employees to serve the food.”
The demand for substitutes has decreased markedly and many of the current sub requests come from teachers who are doing state-required training, Haney said. Those spots are covered by paraeducators, student teachers, education support professionals from the district office and administrators, he said.
The Canyons School District, though, is not fully staffed in transportation, facilities, and nutrition services. At one time, with open positions and sick employees combined, it was down 90 total nutrition service workers, Haney said.
To address that shortage, the district is encouraging employees to be its recruiters and is offering stipends of $200 and $100, respectively, for referrals that lead to the hiring of full- or part-time staff members who remain employed for at least 90 days. The program lasts through April 1.
Challenges and strategies
Ogden School District also faced significant challenges meeting the need for substitute teachers in December and January, according to Jer Bates, the director of communications.
Bates attributed the situation to a greater need than normal because more teachers were out sick or had illness in their household combined with fewer substitutes being available for the same reasons. Some of the district’s teacher specialists and administrators provided support during a portion of the high-need period, he said in an email.
“Fortunately, it currently appears that we have moved beyond the most difficult period and we are currently in a much better situation regarding the smaller need for and greater availability of substitutes,” Bates said.
During the first part of the 2021-22 school year, the Salt Lake City School District typically was able to fill 76% of the open positions created when teachers called in sick, spokesperson Yandary Chatwin said. That number dropped to 56% in January due to the omicron wave and schools had paraprofessionals and other workers who weren’t teaching class fill those gaps.
Chatwin said the district lifted the cap on the number of hours substitutes were allowed to work, which made it possible for them to qualify for benefits.
“We have been running food services with roughly 65% of our regular staff, and illness has had our bus driver ranks at the brink since the winter break.”
Ben Horsley, Granite School District Chief of Staff
A shortage of other employees led to changes at the Salt Lake City School District this year. Bus drivers, who had been hourly workers, became contract employees so they could get benefits, and the district’s Board of Education approved a raise for child nutrition staff members that went into effect this month.
Granite School District Chief of Staff Ben Horsley said in an email that the substitute pool did not shrink but the number of people taking jobs has decreased dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic. There were 2,126 requests for a substitute in the first two weeks of January and 1,019 of those were filled by someone other than a traditional sub, including teachers using their prep period to cover a class and an administrator or paraprofessional stepping in.
Shortages impacted other areas, as well.
“We have been running food services with roughly 65% of our regular staff, and illness has had our bus driver ranks at the brink since the winter break,” Horsley said.
Granite School District recently mailed postcards to area residents announcing it needs substitute teachers and citing incentive bonuses of $50 on top of regular pay for working five jobs in one month, $100 for ten jobs in one month and $150 for 15 jobs in one month. Hourly pay is $14.14 for substitutes with a high school degree, $15.52 for a licensed teacher or someone with a master’s degree and $18.29 for a retired teacher.
Kim Fratto, director of special education programs for the Utah State Board of Education, said there was a shortage of special education teachers even before the pandemic. With the pandemic continuing, “we’ve been very careful not to schedule professional learning opportunities during any school day time that would take teachers away from classrooms,” she said.
Taking on more and more work
Renee Pinkney, vice president of the Utah Education Association, said teachers don’t feel they can take paid time off because of the staff shortage, which is causing a lot of fatigue.
“They don’t feel they can call in even if they’re sick or they have a child with a cold or it seems like it’s a cold but it might be COVID,” Pinkney, who is a social studies teacher at Park City High School, said. “They just don’t feel they can call in because we just don’t have the subs. That’s something that is very stressful.”
When there are unfilled spots, teachers are asked to cover for their colleagues during their preparation period, she said. The Park City School District pays them an hourly rate for that lost time but it can take longer to do the prep work, she said.
“A lot of times teachers are working on their own time in order to try to be prepared for class the next day,” Pinkney said.
In some schools, classes are combined if a substitute isn’t available, she said.
“For example, they might have three classes that they put in a gym in order to have at least one adult trying to monitor them,” Pinkney said. “It really is problematic to not have enough substitutes.”
JoAnne Brown, who teaches 6th- and 7th-grade science and STEM at Olympus Junior High in the Granite School District, also said a lot of teachers are burning out because of the extra work they’ve taken on during the pandemic and the worry of catching COVID.
She said teachers always had to be flexible “but now it’s so much more.” Teachers are being asked more often to use their class preparation time to fill in for a sick colleague, Brown said.
She thinks the substitute teacher pay of $14 an hour is another factor contributing to the shortage of people who want to work as substitutes.
“There are a hundred jobs that pay more that have less stress and less risk,” Brown said.
Granite School District is trying to help by adding extra days when teachers don’t have any training scheduled so they can get caught up on their class preparation, she said. Brown also appreciates Governor Spencer Cox’s executive order that allows state employees to help out.
But actions by the Utah Legislature – including terminating mask mandates in Salt Lake and Summit counties and requiring school districts to get permission from state leaders to switch to online learning – have added to the stress, she said.
“When they’re making rules like that, it makes me feel like they don’t trust us, they don’t trust our judgment and they don’t really value our safety,” Brown said.
She added, “Almost any teacher that I know who can is retiring or going into another profession. Even the ones who love teaching, they feel like they’re holding on by their fingernails.”
Creating a connection to fill positions
To connect employees and employers directly to schools, the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce launched a Substitute Teacher–Business Connection initiative. The Chamber worked with the Salt Lake City and Granite school districts to create a webinar (https://slchamber.com/substitute-teacher-business-connection-information-session/) that tells organizations how they can get help out.
Ginger Chinn, the Salt Lake Chamber vice president of public policy and government affairs, believes there has been an uptick in volunteer applications since the initiative was announced.
“They’re from all professions,” she said. “We see members that have a manufacturing background or a business background that could help various classrooms.”
Governor Cox also is working to alleviate the staffing gap. On Jan. 31, he issued an executive order that allows the state’s 22,000 employees to take paid administrative leave from their jobs to fill a spot. Workers can take up to 30 hours of administrative leave to the end of June to help out at a public or private school
The employees must go through a hiring process, which includes a background check, and they qualify for both their state pay and compensation from the school district.
“We know that kids learn best in the classroom, so we want to do what we can to help schools stay open,” Cox said in a news release. “Our teachers and our children deserve our support during this difficult phase of the pandemic.”
Earlier this month, Cox spent a day substitute teaching three classes at West Lake STEM Junior High in Taylorsville. The governor, who received teacher prep notes the previous night, talked to the 8th graders about drought, population growth and the geography of the state of Utah.
Also subbing at the school, as a special education teacher, was First Lady Abby Cox, who has a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in special education from Utah State University.
Darrell Robinson, a Jordan School District Board member, is dedicating one day a week to help out. His employer, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is giving him paid time off.
So far, Robinson has assisted teachers at three different schools in special education, theater, science and language arts classes. He’s done some custodial work and has spoken to kids about careers. One day, he and Herriman Mayor Lorin Palmer worked as crossing guards.
“I’ve just been pitching in wherever I can,” Robinson said. “I’m not always a sub. We have a lot of need for aides, also.”
He’s encouraging more people to volunteer.
“There’s a lot of work to do,” Robinson said.
Visit school district websites for information on volunteer and job opportunities.
