Reply to NPR Article on Public Schools

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[quote=Anonymous]The reason many school districts had to close doors before Thanksgiving was the sub shortage.  There are limited subs to begin with right now, and those who have been coming don't want to work the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  This is true for teacher substitutes as well as for backup school bus drivers.

Teachers usually aren't allowed to put in for personal leave before a holiday, but even without allowing personal leave there will be a certain number of teachers genuinely ill, or taking COVID leave, or caring for COVID family members or kids who are quarantined due to COVID.  Or needing to take family medical leave to care for their spouse.  Etc.  These are reasons to be absent from work.  In a different year, even if there were no subs, the absences would be handled "in house" by instructional assistants or by other teachers covering for the class during their planning periods, or by doubling classes up into another classroom for the day.

But we have a teacher shortage.  In my elementary school, we have two teachers who resigned and have yet to be replaced.  There just aren't a lot of people applying for jobs right now.  In fact, I was told by my principal that they are hiring teachers now without any training as long as they have a bachelor's degree!!  It's that desperate.

So these two teachers have been out over a month and not replaced.  They are being covered by other teachers and instructional assistants for the moment.  That leaves no one free to cover for anyone else.  So if we have no subs show up -- it's a bad situation immediately.   We really aren't supposed to double kids up into classrooms for COVID related reasons, but it is happening all the time now.

There are ways around this problem.

1) double the pay for subs, especially at high need times.
2) get central office workers (former teachers, or at least those with college degrees) out to the classrooms to help sub.
3) raise the pay for new teachers by giving a one time bonus to encourage them to take the job
4) allow teachers to take leave in one hour increments if they can't, and if they need to leave early or late tell them they don't need to take leave if it is less than 1 hour.  That would encourage people who have been taking half day leave to only take 1 hour leave if possible, and every little bit helps.
5) hire more instructional assistants
6) hire one full time sub per small school at teacher pay to be used as a back up sub.

I don't recommend telling teachers that they cannot take sick leave.  That will only push out more of the parents of young children or older teachers who are caring for ill relatives sooner, which really isn't what you want right now.

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