[News] Schools face a substitute teacher crisis. These districts are getting creative to fix it.

[_Happy boy]

 

This article about the substitute teacher crisis was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger's newsletter.

Stefanie Fernandez usually spends her workweek in the finance office of Independent Stave, a company that manufactures oak barrels for bourbon and other spirits, headquartered in Lebanon, Missouri.

But once every week or two since December, Fernandez has trailed her son into his middle school when she drops him off for classes. She checks in at the office, picks up a binder with "sub notes" and reports to a classroom.

"Good morning, class," she greets the masked students. "I'm Mrs. Fernandez, and this is what we're going to do today."

Fernandez is one of several Independent Stave administrative staffers who have taken their employer up on an offer to spend up to one day a week substitute teaching in the Lebanon School District. The company makes up the difference between the school district's substitute teacher pay and their regular salaries.

The goal is to address a substitute teacher crisis that has left districts across the country struggling to find substitutes when teachers are absent because of Covid-19 or for other reasons.

"I don't think that we fixed the problem, but we are part of the solution," said Jeremiah Hough, a vice president at the barrel manufacturer.

Hough is also vice president of the Lebanon School Board, so he is keenly aware of the challenges the district faces. Hough proposed offering substitute teaching opportunities to his company's administrative employees in December, after school administrators warned that the district was close to sending all of its roughly 4,300 students home to learn on virtual platforms because too many teachers were sick or quarantined.

The support from the local business provided a morale boost and good publicity, said David Schmitz, the district's superintendent. "It's been remarkable in helping us get the message out that we need help," he said.

Almost no one thinks that a heavy reliance on substitutes — who usually have no teacher certification and minimal classroom experience — is ideal for students. But by getting substitutes from its community into classrooms in this unusual year, the Lebanon district has managed, for now, to find temporary, local solutions to a problem that is confounding educators in its state and across the country.

Many school districts report a daily struggle to put adults in front of students. They have pulled administrators out of offices and into classrooms, canceled professional development sessions and asked teachers to give up planning periods and juggle multiple classes. When all else has failed, they've sent students home to virtual learning.

Related: When schools reopen, we may not have enough teachers

The pandemic has exposed chronic staffing shortages in the country's schools. Even before the coronavirus hit, schools were able to fill only about 54 percent of 250,000 teacher vacancies each day, according to a survey of more than 2,000 educators released early last year by the EdWeek Research Center. Now the shortages are much worse, district leaders and principals say, because the need has grown significantly, even as the job has become more risky. Many retired teachers, a group districts often tap for help, have opted not to sub and risk exposure to the virus, while parents who seek substitute jobs for part-time income have stayed home to supervise children learning online.

The desperate search for substitute teachers has led some states and school districts to lower qualifications for the people entrusted to educate and supervise America's schoolchildren at a moment when learning losses are already stacking up.

"When there's difficulty filling classrooms, often the reaction is let's lower the bar, let's widen the gate," said Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. "That's disastrous to do that. Basically, you're sacrificing qualifications because you think it's an emergency."

The shortages, and how states respond to them, could have long-term consequences: Studies have documented that just 10 days of teacher absences can result in lower math and English language arts test scores for elementary school students. And not all substitute teachers are equally qualified; those with training and certifications are more effective than those with minimal credentials. Research also shows that schools with high poverty rates and large numbers of Black and Latino students have the greatest difficulties finding qualified substitutes to cover classes.