Reply to 750+ substitute openings in APS alone

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

This is such a specific question that it's suspicious. Why are you asking?

With such an acute sub shortage. are there ways to relieve pressure? Could temporarily scaling back required PD during school hours reduce the demand for subs? It could give teachers a break temporarily as well given all the other things they're juggling. But maybe APS already does this, which was what the question related to. If PD is scheduled but it can be adjusted depending on sub availability, that's another way to relieve pressure too.
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What on earth makes you think there is all this PD going on during regular school hours? There simply isn't. This is a red herring.
Some ways to resolve the problem:
--have the Syphax staff help out
--have parents, community members, and local business folks sign up to be subs[/quote]
Jay Mathews had a column a while back where he highlighted one sub's assignments.  (Yes, a sample size of one is just that). But it was remarkable how many assignments were due to increased time demands being placed on teachers to juggle a range of requirements from planning, admin meetings, etc. Curious if this applies here as well.
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/substitute-teachers-use-less/2021/08/22/ff3d4946-0031-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

With the sub shortage persisting unfortunately, any way to decrease sub pressure while simultaneously lifting additional demands on teachers could be helpful. Of course, trying to get more community members to sign up would be best.[/quote]
I’m a classroom based assistant. In the last 5 years I can think of one time my lead teacher was out for PD for more than 1 hour. You may be lumping things like IEP meetings in with that, those are not optional. In my experience at the elementary level those are the easiest things to get subs for. Meetings are all scheduled on two days and we’ve always had regulars for that, people tend to like the meeting floater jobs. (There is a large edmentum rollout this year that might drive up the PD numbers but at least at elementary level it hasn’t been an issue for my teams)[/quote]
Thanks, interesting to know. Has anyone looked at the overall sources of sub demand? In an ideal world, we'd have enough subs so it wouldn't matter. But given the current shortages are so great & persistent, are there ways to cut back on demand that could also benefit teachers by lightening their non-classroom responsibilities? Of course, teacher sick and personal days are a given. IEP as you note are mandatory. Maybe there's not a lot beyond that that can be scaled back. But it could be good to look at the data just in case. It might also provide a visible illustration of the myriad of responsibilities we've asked teachers to shoulder that may be contributing to stress and burnout. Of course, the best option is to continue with vigorous efforts to boost the sub supply.[/quote]
In my school it would be a blip. Years ago I worked at a school and we had a pretty robust pool of subs. In the winter there were several real estate agents, in May/June we had lots of college students. This covered the illness season and the end of year stuff.  I think recruiting in those areas is a great idea. Look for people in self-employed careers with slow seasons. Beef up processing in central office. [/quote]

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