“We know that teacher absences, in general, do impose.

In higher-level math or science classes, the decline is greater. Most subs have daily or short-term assignments, so the impact is hard to measure.īut some research shows that when a teacher is absent for 10 days over the course of a school year, student learning can drop up to 3%. Michael Hansen, a senior fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, says too few studies have explored the impact of substitute teachers on student achievement. What does that mean for students? They learn less. We are out actively trying to do all we can to recruit folks to come in and work.” “It’s not that we’re sitting around twiddling our thumbs. “We have to continue to keep the district going until we can get over this hump that we’re experiencing,” Thompson said. Wichita Superintendent Alicia Thompson said the all-hands-on-deck strategy means she and other upper-level administrators have considered getting their food handler's licenses so they can serve lunches when the need arises. “There’s simply not enough people to get kids on the bus and get them to school.” “We’ve even heard of school districts deploying National Guard members to drive school buses,” said Hudspeth, the HR director. Administrators leave their downtown offices and head back to classrooms. Teachers juggle multiple classes or use plan time to cover for absent colleagues. So schools and districts have to get creative. It’s worst in elementary schools, where about one in three classrooms that need a sub don’t get one. “We do our best to fill every position, but that’s just not possible right now.”īefore the pandemic, the Wichita district’s fill rate for substitutes was close to 90%. looking at where we can plug people in to give schools the best coverage possible,” said Stacie McKay, who manages the substitute office in Wichita. to 9 a.m., we are non-stop on the phones.

In Wichita, pay starts at $119 a day and can go as high as $172 a day. Most districts have boosted pay to attract substitute teachers and para-educators, who often work one-on-one with special education students or help in classrooms. The Shawnee Mission district near Kansas City recently contracted with out-of-state companies to help fill teacher vacancies. The Andover school district in Butler County assembled a team of its most experienced subs and pays them full-time, with benefits, to fill in for sick or quarantined employees. This fall, it has about 450, and the district needs about 400 a day. Three years ago, Wichita had more than 1,000 people certified and signed up to work as substitute teachers. Many retired teachers, who normally make up the bulk of potential substitutes, are opting out because they don’t want to risk exposure to the virus. That took those subs out of an already dwindling pool. Some of those spots were filled with long-term substitutes. When the pandemic hit, even more teachers quit. From 2010 to 2020, enrollment in teacher preparation programs nationwide declined by more than one-third. In some schools, principals have to serve lunches.įor nearly a decade now, scores of teachers have been leaving the profession - retiring or finding other work - and fewer young people have filled the gaps. Even before the coronavirus hit, districts scrambled to find enough substitute teachers, para-educators, cafeteria workers and bus drivers. The pandemic exposed chronic staffing shortages at schools in Kansas and across the country. and will, probably, for the remainder of the school year.” “It’s a critical thing for us,” said Sean Hudspeth, head of human resources for the state’s largest district in Wichita. Thousands of teachers across the state are not.Ībsences triggered by COVID-19 outbreaks and the resulting quarantines leave schools straining to fill the gaps with substitutes when retirees and the other usual fill-in suspects are less willing to command a classroom on the fly.

Kansas school bus shortage