‘Difficult to find’

Denise Magalotti has been pretty busy lately.

The former third-grade teacher in the Perkiomen Valley School District, who left the classroom 20 years ago when her first child was born, has worked as a substitute teacher for the past four years.

“When my children were in high school, they wanted me to come back,” she explained. “They said, ‘Mom, you’d be a fun sub.’ “

It was an easy sale for Magalotti.

She had never lost her passion for working with children, and was already highly involved at her kids’ school as a volunteer for all sorts of things. So, she gave it a shot.

Magalotti said she likes the variety of being a substitute. She would work two or so days a week, getting a chance to learn new things alongside her students.

This year, her plate has filled a bit.

Magalotti is one of five substitutes hired full time to fill in at Wilson High School. The district also has four building substitutes at each of its middle schools and one or two at each elementary school.

The building substitutes work four days a week at the middle and high schools — those buildings are fully virtual on Wednesdays — and daily at the elementary schools, getting assigned to whichever classroom needs attending.

“There is work for us every single day,” Magalotti said.

“They keep us busy.”

The addition of building substitutes, a new position in the district, was Wilson’s proactive approach to an expected shortage of subs this school year.

It’s a problem that school districts across the state, and the nation, have faced for several years. Finding people to man classrooms when a teacher is sick or otherwise out has been an increasingly challenging task.

Add in a global pandemic that shows no signs of letting up, the task has become even more daunting.

Having a shallow pool of substitute teachers isn’t a new problem.

Pennsylvania State Education Association director of communications Chris Lilienthal said it’s a reflection of a long-term shortage of teachers.

“Pennsylvania and the nation have been experiencing a teacher shortage, including a shortage of substitutes, going back well before the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “It’s been a concern for many years. We’ve seen a declining number of college students majoring in and earning degrees in education. We’ve seen a decrease in the number of first-year teaching certificates issued.”

In a nationwide survey of 2,000 school leaders across the U.S. by the EdWeek Research Center in January, before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half reported being “very concerned” about being able to fill their need for substitute teachers in the 2020-21 school year. Only 54% of the school leaders reported being able to regularly fill their daily substitute needs.

The pandemic has made the problem worse.

More teachers are missing class because of sickness or isolation, and some people are reticent to sign up for a job that could put them at risk of being exposed to the virus.

Local school leaders say that trend has clearly been hitting Berks County.

It has already led to the short-term closure of one school.

Officials in the Conrad Weiser School District announced in early November that its high school would be shutting down for just over a week because of a lack of teachers.

“The decision to move to remote learning for the high school was due to the number of teachers who were subject to quarantine,” a message posted on the district’s Facebook page said.

Leaders from other local districts said they’ve faced challenges as well.

“Even though Antietam has been virtual since March, we struggled to fill substitute positions long before the pandemic hit us,” said Dr. Jeffrey Boyer, superintendent. “Substitute teachers are certainly difficult to find.”

Boyer said his district has also struggled to fill fulltime teaching positions, especially for special education positions.

“I am very concerned, to say the least,” he said.

A little farther north, Brandywine Heights superintendent Andrew Potteiger said the same has been true for his district.

“Securing substitutes for coverages when a professional teaching staff member is out for leave or sick day has been a challenge in recent years, and it has exacerbated itself with the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

‘People in the pipeline’

The added need for substitute teachers, and the increasing difficulty finding them, didn’t come as a surprise to local school leaders.

“We identified back in June when we started to develop our health and safety plan that substitutes were going to be a high priority for this school district,” said Brad Hahn, Wilson’s director of human resources.

That’s why the district decided to create building substitute positions, which gives schools a built-in team of replacement teachers to rely on.

“They are there to basically be the first folks to fill in, if and when there is a callout,” Hahn said.

The district also sent letters to nearly 250 other substitute teachers, filling them in on how the district would be operating this year and asking about their interest in working at Wilson schools.

And, Hahn added, the district has tried to remain competitive with how much they pay substitutes. Former Wilson teachers get $170 per day, and other subs get $140 per day.

On top of that, substitutes get an extra $275 for every 20 days they work in the district.

Hahn said the response to the district’s recruitment efforts has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We have a lot of people in the pipeline,” he said.

For the first couple months of the school year,

Wilson didn’t need to tap into that pipeline all that much.

Hahn said the district was pretty much on par with its usual need for about 18 substitutes per day through September and October.

November and the start of December have seen the need rise, Hahn said.

“November was difficult. The beginning of December is going to be difficult,” he said. “But we’ve probably only had two days so far this school year where we were in really rough rough shape where we had to have an administrator cover a study hall or briefly cover a call until someone could come from another building.

“It’s been a grind, but we’re on top of it. … Our whole goal is to stay in school and provide quality education for our students.”

Other approaches

Potteiger said Brandywine Heights, like Wilson and other districts, is using daily substitutes that report to the district each day.

“Predicting that there would be additional absences this year, there were a minimum of two substitute teachers assigned to each building in the district on a daily basis,” he said. “This has helped tremendously with filling vacancies so far this year.”

Potteiger said the daily substitute teachers were included in the district’s backto-school professional development training, as well as ongoing training opportunities.

That way they are able to seamlessly fill in for a staff member, which otherwise could be difficult because of all the new programs and technology required to facilitate hybrid and virtual education.

Brandywine Heights has also contracted with Substitute Teacher Service, a company that finds subs to cover for absent teachers. The partnership has helped raise the district’s fill rate, Potteiger said.

Dr. Robert Pleis, Twin Valley School District superintendent, said his district is also trying to find ways to deal with the lack of substitute teachers.

“I believe all school districts are experiencing the same substitute shortage,” he said.

Twin Valley has upped its daily rate for substitutes to $134, Pleis said, and is offering a bonus to staff members who refer a substitute candidate to the district. The district is also participating in the Berks County Intermediate Unit’s guest teacher program.

“Those are a few of the ideas we are using to hire more substitutes, but we are still running low,” Pleis said.