Sharon Fudge, who has substitute taught at Centralia for 14 years, walks back to her desk after talking with students in Lance Ulrigg's Microsoft and Adobe certification class on Monday afternoon at Centralia High School.
Lewis County is seeing a shortage of substitute teachers, causing added stress to cash-strapped districts and employees.
Melissa Thomas, secretary of the Lewis County Substitute Cooperative, said in the 17 years she’s been with the co-op, she has never seen such a shortage.
“It’s been really bad this year,” Thomas said, adding that the number of substitutes has been declining in the last few years. “This year I was way short on subs.”
Right now, the co-op, which covers 12 districts in Lewis County and the Rochester School District, only has 210 substitute teachers to cover over 1,000 teachers in the area.
So far this year, Thomas has 270 total unfilled jobs for certified substitute teachers. Typically, that’s the amount of unfilled jobs she has for an entire school year.
Thomas said the “million dollar question” is how to fix the shortage. To help deal with the demand, she has been hiring emergency certified substitute teachers. Those teachers typically go through an orientation and complete a six and a half hour online training course. A college degree is required, but many have not yet completed their student teaching.
“They’re just kind of to help cover,” she said. “They help fill in when needed.”
The Chehalis School District is the managing district for the co-op. Assistant Superintendent Mary Lou Bissett said the co-op has 42 emergency substitutes currently.
“This is coming off of years of almost none,” she said. “We get people emergency certified to be subs in our classrooms because we have a shortage of teachers.”
The Chehalis School District hired two district substitutes for the 2014-15 school year. The positions were full time. This year the district has the equivalent of 1.4 district subs, Bissett said.
When a substitute teacher cannot be found, many districts use their own staff to help cover.
Bissett said teachers will often fill in for one another, and the district will buy teachers prep periods to allow them to teach another class. Principals and building administrators also help when a substitute cannot be found.
“It’s all hands on deck,” Bissett said. “It’s a much more significant problem this year.”
Last week, Centralia Assistant Superintendent Matt McCauley had to teach a class at Washington Elementary because there was no one else available.
“That happens often, more than most people probably think,” Thomas said of staff taking it upon themselves to fill empty slots. “We have to have a plan B, and this year we seem to be having a Plan C, D and E, anymore.”
Bills to Help Substitute
Teacher Shortage
The Legislature is working on two bills that would help the teacher shortage if they pass.
House and Senate bills both aiming to allow early retirement teachers to substitute teach have each passed their original houses and now face the opposition.
The Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee held a public hearing on House Bill 1737, sponsored by Rep. Ed Orcutt, on Thursday, Feb. 18.
Orcutt first introduced the bill last session. It would, with its amendments, allow an early retirement teacher to substitute teach for up to 630 hours in a school district with a documented shortage of substitutes without having their benefits suspended.
The bill would sunset in 2020.
Currently, retirement benefits are suspended for teachers who retired early under provisions allowed starting in 2008 if they substitute teach.
Thomas said the bill would help with the substitute shortage in Lewis County, although it would probably not solve the issue completely.
Orcutt, a Republican from Kalama representing the 20th District, told the committee he drafted the bill after a constituent notified him of the lack of substitutes.
At first Orcutt, being a “deal’s a deal kind of guy,” said he thought about how teachers opting for early retirement knew they would be locked out from substituting, but then he considered the benefit to students.
“If (students) don’t have a qualified substitute teacher, then somebody is just going in there and managing the classroom for the day,” he said.
A retiree could pick up the lesson plan and teach students.
“Just because their teacher can’t be there doesn’t mean they should suffer and not get the education,” Orcutt said.
He said in Lewis County, school districts pull substitutes from a pool, so substitutes could be teaching in different districts throughout the year.
Gene Sementi, superintendent for West Valley School District in Spokane, said he would appreciate any work on the teacher and substitute shortage.
“(The) sub shortage — it’s been pretty dramatic. We’ve doubled up classrooms. We’ve had ... students moved to the library in large groups for a study hall in at the secondary schools,” Sementi said.
Sementi said the district began struggling with a substitute shortage last fall likely because it hired additional teachers from the class size reduction and all-day kindergarten funds.
Many of the hired teachers had been substitutes, so the sub pool shrank.
From Spokane Valley, East Valley School District Superintendent Kelly Shea said the district faces a substitute shortage almost daily. In the past 51 days, 664 teachers have required a substitute; the district filled 594 absences.
To cover the 70 openings, teachers have given up prep time to cover for their colleagues, he said.
Shea said the district is trying to limit the number of school days teachers miss for training, but when professional development is held after school, teachers have to be compensated for the time outside of the normal contracted day.
Senate Bill 6455, sponsored by Sen. Bruce Dammeier, matches the House bill’s number of hours an early retirement teacher would be allowed to work. The bill, which has been amended, would require the school district to pay substitutes at least the same as the amount allocated by the state to the district for substitute teacher compensation.
The bill also aims to increase teachers in Washington with a recruitment campaign targeted at people with teaching certificates who are not working as teachers, undeclared undergraduates, out-of-state teachers, military personnel and their spouses and other groups.
The Senate passed Dammeier’s bill on Wednesday, Feb. 17. It awaits a vote in the House.
