Teachers ‘Unprecedented’ teacher shortages Low pay is another hurdle
must care for a sick family member, that’s when the real issues occur, he said.
“It’s only mid-September. Once you get into November — assuming you get to November — that’s when people get sick,” he said, noting it’s also difficult to get substitutes in December around the holiday season.
“What do you do when you can’t get substitutes to go in? Who’s going to monitor the kids? Whois going to teach them? Howareyougoingtodo it? That’s going to be a real concern,” hesaid. “Substitutes for the mostpart don’t have the skills and the training to do the distance learning, so that’s another set of issues.”
Brad Beckner, vice president of the Northeast region for the staffing company Kelly Education, called teacher shortages due to COVID19 “unprecedented.” Active in about 50 Connecticut districts already, he said the company is recruiting educators across the state.
Beckner said while there was already a shortage of teachers before the pandemic, the company is now seeing a significant increase in teacher vacancies in Connecticut and other states due to educators resigning, taking early retirement and applying for the Family and Medical Leave Act.
“It’s really a shortage of teachers [in schools] that then need to attempt to be staffed and fulfilled,” he said. “There may not be necessarily a shortage of substitute teachers but rather a shortage of opportunities that substitute teachers are willing to take. ... If it weren’t for the teachers not being there, there would be no need for substitute teachers.”
Given the nature of the virus, school administrators expect retired teachers who used to serve as substitutes may not want to return to the building. As job displacement in a variety of industries continues nationally, Beckner said Kelly Education has seen more interest from individuals looking to get into teaching by way of serving as a substitute, as well as recent graduates gaining teaching experience.
“Obviously, we have to make sure they have the credentialing that the state and school districts require, but we are seeing an increase in interest,” he said. However, for the most part, districts rely on the same pool of return substitutes who have chosen that path as a flexible way to make supplementary income, he said.
But now, more schools are in need of experienced individuals who can serve on a long-term or permanent basis, Beckner said. They are also looking for substitutes who work only in one building to help prevent the spread of a virus across a district.
“You’re not looking for someone that’s going to come in and be able to handle ... an instruction plan for one or two days,” Beckner said. “You’re now looking for an individual who has the experience and the ability to maintain that classroom and instructional continuity for a period of months.”
According to the National Education Association, the average Connecticut public school teacher made about $76,465 for 2018-2019, ranked the fifth-highest in the nation. Generally speaking, Bookman said, a new Connecticut teacher might make roughly $45,000, while a very experienced educator could make around $90,000.
“A substitute is making a fraction of any of that,” he said.
For argument’s sake, Beckner said, pretend the average teacher wage in Connecticut was about $55,000.
“On average there’s 180 days in the school year. That equates to a little over $300 a day in compensation. The average substitute wage in the state of Connecticut is somewhere between $100 and $110 a day,” he said. “Now you’re looking for someone who can do exactly what that full-time teacher does for the third of the pay.”
Online job postings for substitute teachers in Connecticut range from about $80 to nearly $300 a day in various districts.
“The question becomes, how much money do you need to bring substitutes in?” Bookman said. “You can’t just raise it up to some amount that maybe would attract [substitutes]. We’ve already spent a lot of money, [and] we don’t know how much we’re getting back for [personal protective equipment]. It’s going to be a financial issue.”
But the promise of higher pay is not enough to outweigh health concerns, said Jeff Leake, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
How to solve staffing problems has “been left up to individual districts, which I get,” he said. “This is the Connecticut of 169 towns that sometimes think they need to go in 169 different directions. ”But the bottom line here is that some districts have reached out to us saying, ’We’re willing to pay more,’ but even then they’re not able to get the substitutes they need.”
Leake said the association has tried to work with local colleges, thinking maybe some students who are at the end of their training might be able to teach, but there are just not as many people interested in teaching as there used to be.
“It’s just getting worse right now,” he said, adding he wouldn’t be surprised if temporary shutdowns due to staffing issues continue. “This is going to be something we surely have to deal with for a while.”
“What do you do when you can’t get substitutes to go in? Who’s going to monitor the kids? Who is going to teach them? How are you going to do it?”
— Glastonbury Superintendent of Schools Alan Bookman