Substitutes are hard to come by.  Young people want benefits that usually day-to-day subs don’t receive.  Our best pool of substitutes begins with retired teachers.  Washington raised its compensation for our retired teachers who sub to $150 a day.  Our regular subs are $120.  

 

The emergency substitute concept is our next best option.  Anyone with a bachelor’s degree can go through a brief training and then sub.  Often, these are younger folks looking for work while thinking about their career.  We have a coach doing this currently. 

 

We have 4 retired teachers subbing, 5 regular emergency subs plus some who are not in regularly, and a handful of certified substitutes.  It is difficult to find subs. Word of mouth with current staff works best. 

 

Emergency subs usually, in my opinion, work for one or two districts.  Certified subs try to build a relationship with a district to be considered for future employment. 

 

The other subject that makes the substitute issue greater is teacher absenteeism.  This issue exacerbates the lack of substitutes in many school districts. 

 

Some blame the pandemic for the change in mentality.  I am not sure if that is true.  But something is clearly different these days.