COVID-19 worsens substitute teachers shortage

School districts nationwide are rushing to fill substitute teaching slots ahead of an anticipated labor shortage due to COVID-19 this school year.

On Massachusetts’ south shore, the Fairhaven Public Schools system nearly doubled the per diem for trained substitute teachers from $85 to $165, hoping to entice educators who are wary of classroom work in the middle of a pandemic.

“I may be stealing this phrase, but it’s like we’re in a plane that is 30,000 feet in the air and we’re flying this sucker,” Superintendent Robert Baldwin said about revamping of the school’s substitute teaching pool.

Pay also will be raised in a Chicago suburb, now that the Maine Township High School Board approved a $30 bonus to its daily pay (typically about $120). The district’s number of substitutes — many of them older teachers and in the high-risk category — fell from 150 at year’s end to 60 earlier this month.

“Plain and simple, they’re hesitant to come back to start the school year and be around crowds of people,” Assistant Superintendent Greg Dietz said at an Aug. 3 school board meeting.

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds temporarily suspended requirements that substitutes hold bachelor degrees and be at least 21 years old in order to fill in for a teacher for a day (or longer).

“We have to somewhat be flexible and do the best that we can,” Ms. Reynolds, a Republican, said in a press conference last month. “I know it’s not going to be easy. I know it’s going to require some changes to how things are done in the classroom.”

Before the coronavirus shuttered schools last spring, roughly 250,000 teachers were counted as absent daily in the U.S., according to a report from EdWeek Research Center and temp agency Kelly Education. Only 54% of those absences are filled each by substitutes, leaving principals to close gaps with shared duties among faculty.

School districts are desperately trying to entice substitute teachers already hesitant to enter crowded classrooms amid outbreaks of COVID-19.

“It’s such a crazy time for everybody,” said Geoffrey Smith, founding director of the Substitute Teaching Institute at Utah State University, now known as STEDI, a trainer of noncertified substitutes for schools across the country, including Boston and Nashville, Tennessee. “But we do have teachers willing to teach.”

Mr. Smith estimated that 60% of substitutes intend to return this fall, adding that “when we see lowering requirements, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just depends on whether we’re dropping training and just putting them [teachers] into the classroom.”

One long-term cause of the substitute shortage, he says, is younger teachers are more willing to stay home when sick or caring for children, whereas baby boomers would “teach through the sick.”

But such pluck can’t be the situation this year, as respiratory droplets might infect an entire classroom with the deadly virus.

Already districts have been hit. Over the weekend, a school district in Dallas, Georgia, — the same that initially disciplined a student for posting to social media a photo of crowded hallways — announced it would close this week for cleaning after six students and three staffers tested positive for COVID-19. Earlier this month, nearly 120 students were sent home to quarantine after a school district in Corinth, Mississippi, reopened for in-person learning.

The cautionary tales are creating hesitancy among potential substitutes about signing up for the fall. A STEDI study of teachers shows that nearly half of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that they were fearful to start the new year.

Some schools are worried about introducing short-term staff into cohorts that could compromise health or online environments that may have steeper learning curves.

The Fairhaven, Massachusetts, district is creating new “building substitute” positions to help fully fill the gaps this year.

“We’re trying to minimize risk across-the-board,” said Mr. Baldwin, whose district serves 2,000 kids and requires subs daily in each of its four buildings. “Last year, I asked the principals, ’What if we just got you three or four substitutes that you owned?’ Now, on a good day when no one is gone, there’s stuff they [subs] can do, and on a bad day, they’re fully loaded and aren’t making phone calls and scrambling early in the morning.”