Lack of substitutes one of most vexing problems for schools in a pandemic

In a normal year, the question would have been an easy one for a first grader.

“Who’s your teacher this year?”

But it’s not a normal year, and Megan Stock’s daughter, a first grader at McPhee Elementary School, where her mom teaches art, told the aunt who’d asked that she didn’t know.

Her mom knew why: Her teacher was on maternity leave. so the class got a long-term substitute. Then the long-term substitute quit, meaning a series of other teachers had to fill in until the school could find another long-term substitute, and her original teacher returned.

Stock’s daughter began school learning remotely along with about 20% of LPS students, but came back to the classroom, joining the majority of students back in school, navigating their way through a pandemic that has caused an unprecedented disruption to education.

And one of the most vexing problems is a lack of substitutes.

“Everywhere it’s a problem,” said Jenni Benson, president of the Nebraska State Education Association, which represents about 28,000 of the state’s teachers. “I have districts that have gone to four-day weeks because of (a lack of) subbing.”

In some parts of the state, Benson said, school districts have had to shut down for two weeks because teachers were absent and there were not enough substitutes to fill in, or grade sections have had to go temporarily remote because of a lack of substitutes.

That hasn’t happened at Lincoln Public Schools, but it has still caused significant problems.

If a teacher is gone and there’s no substitute available to fill in, teachers in the building must cover those classes. That means taking away from their “plan” time — time teachers are given each day for lesson planning, writing assessments, answering emails, grading and all the other tasks they are responsible for when they’re not in the classroom with students.

That’s always been the case, but it’s much worse this year, and adding to an already stressful teaching environment.

The percentage of absences that go unfilled by substitutes at LPS — meaning teachers in the building must fill in — is nearly 23%, double the percentage last year, said Eric Weber, associate superintendent of human resources.

That means districtwide, twice as many teachers must, with little notice, take over another teacher’s class. At LPS, middle school and high school teachers get two plan periods a day, elementary teachers get one plan period during the day and 45 minutes either before or after school.

That plan time is even more important now, because teachers have had to master the technology needed to teach students remotely and take on the extra work of teaching students remotely and in-person simultaneously.

“What I see from my co-workers is frustration,” said Dave Beatty, a sixth grade science teacher at Park Middle School. “At 8 a.m., they are already dreading not having plan time and running across the building to cover a class of kids they don’t know, where they have no relationship with the kids.”

The emails start coming in around 6 a.m. as office personnel learn through the online substitute management system how many classes won’t be covered that day, and what used to be an option now feels like an obligation.

“Now it’s not ‘Hey, can you do this?’ It’s ‘You need to do this,’” said Benson, who used to teach at LPS. “They’re in a position where they feel they can’t say no.”

It’s common for schools to have several classes a week — often daily — that need to be covered. Benson said one LPS teacher had to cover 18 times in two weeks. She got a call from another teacher who said she had to call the office to get someone to step into a class because she’d been with students for five hours and had to use the restroom.

Beatty said he worried that getting subs would be a problem, because it’s always been hit-and-miss and he knew the pandemic would exacerbate that. So he decided to teach seven of eight periods this year so he’d be a lower priority for covering classes, even though teachers are compensated for doing so.

“There’s an incentive,” he said. “To me, it’s not a big enough incentive.”

Beatty’s wife is a teacher, too, and brings home hours of work each night, he said.

Interestingly, given the quarantining required because of COVID-19, the number of requests for time off are actually down this year, Weber said, from 10,171 absences at this time last year, to 9,473 so far this year. Still, the number of unfilled jobs jumped from 1,054 to 2,170.

Weber said the decrease is likely because teachers are taking less discretionary leave.

“Our teachers recognize they need to be there for their kids, that it’s hard in this environment for subs,” he said. They also could be saving leave in case they need to quarantine.

The biggest issue, Weber said, is that fewer substitutes are taking jobs, even though the pool is slightly larger than last year at this time.

Many substitutes are retired teachers, which puts them in a higher-risk category with regard to COVID-19. And the classroom demands have grown exponentially with the new technology demand, and juggling remote and in-person learners is intimidating to many subs.

Courtney Lee, a long-term substitute for a second grade teacher on maternity leave from Huntington Elementary, taught middle school and high school students in western Nebraska until she moved to Lincoln with her family.

“I’m not a second grade teacher, I don’t have that background, so I’m learning how to teach second grade and I’m learning all the oddities of teaching second grade in a pandemic,” she said.

LPS has tried to encourage more subs to take jobs, including offering a stipend for working more than 15 days a month and creating training to help them learn the technology for remote learners, which they are paid to take. Last year, LPS simplified the application process for retired teachers and has hired a small number of full-time subs it assigns to buildings with large numbers of unfilled sub jobs.

One of those full-time subs went to McPhee after the long-term sub quit, which Stock said they’ve appreciated.

The state also has increased the length of time temporary subs (those who have degrees other than teaching degrees and get training to become certified) can teach.

Lee started substituting just as the pandemic hit, and once she and her husband decided to send their own children to school, she decided to keep on subbing — and quickly realized the demand, especially to fill long-term jobs.

“If you don’t have a long-term sub, it’s dire,” she said.

She’s been surprised (and pleased) with how well her second graders wear masks, and juggling remote and in-person learners is going pretty well, she said.

“I think the challenge is just continuing to be OK with the unknown,” she said. “It’s so hard for educators, because we’re such planners, very detail-oriented.”

One of her biggest worries: getting exposed to the virus, forcing the school to find a sub for its sub.

The need for subs, and their ability to fill jobs varies from school to school — even class to class. Many subs only have certain schools where they will work.

Stock said high-poverty schools often struggle more.

“My point is, it’s not equitable across the district,” said Stock, who teaches at McPhee, a high-poverty school. More full-time subs, who could be assigned to specific buildings, would help, she said. Weber said budgeting is an issue, but officials are considering hiring a few more second semester.

While higher unfilled rates tend to be at higher-poverty schools, that isn’t always the case, in part because the number of subs needed at schools — and needed at one time — also varies greatly.

The unfilled rates at elementary schools range from 1.4% at Cavett Elementary (a more-affluent school) to 56.2% at Lakeview (a high-poverty school), though some higher-poverty schools have lower unfilled rates than more-affluent ones.

Middle school unfilled jobs range from 4% at the more-affluent Scott to 56.7% at the higher-poverty Dawes. In high schools, it ranges from 4% at Southeast to 31.8% at Lincoln East, neither of which have the highest poverty rates of high schools. 

But the need is there in every school, and the burden most often falls to teachers, who must cover when their colleagues are gone. And teachers worry it also hurts the students.

In elementary schools, if art or special-education teachers need to fill in, some students might not get art or the extra help they need that day, Stock said. 

Teachers often have to cover classes with little notice, so there’s little preparation, and in middle schools they’ve staggered the release time for students to reduce crowds in the hall so a class may have to wait several minutes for the teacher to get there.

While an adult — likely an administrator — oversees the class until the teacher arrives, the idle time can still cause behavior problems and it’s a loss of instructional time, Beatty said.

“You are literally running to a class with no idea what they’re doing,” he said.

Beatty isn’t sure what the solution is, but he wishes people had a better understanding of what teachers are going through and what they’re doing to keep things going. Now, he said, commenters on social media are not kind. And that makes it harder.

“Instead of saying all those people should get fired, maybe ask better questions about what is going on,” he said. “And be nicer, maybe.”