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I Filed a FOIA report on the sub shortage and receive this email
Dear Ms. Patterson: This serves as the response to your Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, received February 3, 2017, for substitute teacher statistics. Below are the requested records for SY2017. Data from SY2013 is unavailable. Fairfax County Public Schools Substitute Teacher Positions Sep-16 Oct-16 Nov-16 Dec-16 Jan-17 Number of Unfilled Substitute Teaching Positions 352 1,528 1,375 943 998 Percent of All Substitute Teaching Positions Unfilled 3% 7% 6% 6% 5% |
| So? |
| Wow. That's really something. What? I don't know. But it's something. |
In MCPS it's problematic because other teachers in the building have to cover for the folks who are out if their sub job doesn't get picked up. This takes away from meeting time, planning, grading, etc. |
Yeah. I thought that was a lot of teachers. 1500 is 7% of the number of substitute teaching positions. |
| Same thing in FCPS. |
| Is there a way to change things so that FCPS does not need as many subs? |
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So that means that in October 2016 there were 21,828 needed sub jobs in FCPS!!
While I'm sure it's problematic to have any of the sub jobs go unfilled I think the real story here is why there is 21,828 jobs to start with! |
Where did you get that number? |
| It makes me think that every time a teacher is out, even for a partial day, it becomes a substitute position. If you add up all the days every teacher needs a sub, even if it's for a partial day, it might add up to that much. |
So...Their website says they have about 22,000 school-based employees. Let's say that 20,000 of those are teachers. That means in October, they needed to cover 420,000 classroom days. 21,828 of those were call outs. That's about 5%...seems totally reasonable to me. |
I'm not the PP, but this number is correct. If 1,526 positions were unfilled and that is 7% of the substitute positions, the total number of substitute positions is 21,828. The calculation is 1,526/0.07. |
Aren't teachers doing DRA tests in October? They need subs for those. As well as other meetings and planning that takes place during school hours. |
If there were 1,528 unfilled sub jobs and 7% of all jobs were unfilled the total number of jobs filled and unfilled is 21,828. (There may be a faster way to calculate it but I used my trusty cross-multiplying of fractions to solve for the unknown. 1528/x = 7/100) |
| Ms. Patterson...while you were asking our staff to pull this context devoid information for your FOIA request, the analyst working on your case could've been filling an unfilled sub job. |