KC area substitute teachers in such short supply, this school district offers pay hike
Center School District officials came up with a strategy this summer to compete with other districts in the area: They bumped up pay for substitute teachers.
Now they are raising the pay yet again. That’s because districts in the Kansas City area and across the country face a shortage of substitutes. And in this region, competition to fill a classroom with a substitute is stiff.
The number of available substitutes has declined gradually over the last few years, said Michael Weishaar, Center’s interim superintendent. “But this year in particular is a more dire situation.”
Education experts blame low unemployment and a national teacher shortage. In Missouri the problem is compounded by changes in teacher retirement rules. Now, retired teachers cannot work more than 550 hours a year, or they lose their retirement.
Center announced Tuesday it will now pay substitutes $130 a day, more than other districts in the metro area.
On any given day, Weishaar said, Center can be left with 20% to 30% of its classrooms without a permanent or substitute teacher. School leaders scramble to divide students among other teachers or to pull in counselors or administrators to cover classes for the day.
“First and foremost, instruction suffers,” Weishaar said. “But it also hurts morale.”
The story is similar in Hickman Mills, which has seen a dip in the classroom “fill rate” — the percentage of absent teachers’ classrooms that get a substitute — from 96% during the 2016-2017 school year to 86% last school year, said Casey Klapmeyer, associate superintendent of human resources. Her district needs between 60 to 120 substitutes a day.
Like other districts in the area, Hickman and Center contract out their substitute teacher operation, many to Kelly Education Staffing.
“Before we went to Kelly we were only filling six out of every 10 absences,” Klapmeyer said. While every district would like to have a fill rate at 100%, the reality is that the mid-90% range is considered good.
A National Council on Teacher Quality report says that public school teachers on average missed 11 school days per academic year and that teacher absences impede student achievement.
So when schools can’t fill those classrooms with qualified substitutes, “it almost becomes a lost day of instruction,” Klapmeyer said. It’s why Center schools also incentivized sick leave by raising the payback teachers would get on remaining sick leave when they moved on from the district.
Becoming a substitute teacher is fairly easy. Qualifications vary from state to state and range from needing a High School Equivalency Certificate to needing a teaching degree and a full-blown teaching certificate.
In Missouri, substitutes need only 60 hours of college credit, in any area. No degree is needed.
In Kansas a person can get an emergency substitute license with 60 college credit hours. A standard substitute license requires a bachelor’s degree. Substitutes can cross state lines to work.
With such a tight job market, Weishaar said, schools are not only competing with one another for substitutes, they are competing with other industries as well.
“We have seen a strong erosion of the number of people who are out there looking for jobs,” Klapmeyer said. “That takes a lot of people out of the substitute teacher pool.”
How much a district pays can make a difference in how easy it is to put a substitute in front of a classroom in an emergency. For the most part, long-term substitute positions are a priority for districts and are usually not the positions that are hardest to fill.
“We hire talented individuals as substitute teachers, people who have many other employment options, especially in a busy metropolitan market like Kansas City,” said Keith Elliott, Kelly’s lead of operations in Missouri and Kansas. “So we’re pleased the Center School District chose to recognize substitute teachers’ contributions with a pay increase.”
With Center raising its pay for substitutes, Hickman Mills plans to review its $104-a-day wage. For now Hickman Mills is in line with other urban districts, including Grandview, which pays $111 and Kansas City Public Schools, which pays $95.
But that could change, Klapmeyer said. “Oh boy, here we go, a salary war.”
