Teachers miss more teaching and there are too few substitutes

Schools across the country have had no shortage of challenges since the pandemic. Students are falling behind academically. Cases of misconduct are on. Students are absent much more often than before.

But there's another problem that has gotten some school districts into trouble. Teachers are also missing more school.

Teachers typically receive paid sick days and a small number of personal days. During the 2022-2023 school year in New York City, nearly one in five public school teachers were absent for eleven days or more, an increase from the previous year and before the pandemic. In Michigan, about 15 percent of teachers were absent in a given week last school year, compared to about 10 percent in 2019. researchers found.

More recently, teachers have been absent a school in Ohio closed for a day and allowed in high school students Massachusetts to meet in the canteen during class with little supervision.

“The proof in the pudding is how many people have used up their leave and are asking to take unpaid days off,” said Jim Fry, the superintendent of College Place, a small district in southern Washington state. “That used to be a very rare occurrence. Now it is weekly.”

Making matters even more difficult is the national shortage of substitute teachers, which many educators say has worsened since the pandemic. Schools that serve low-income areas are the least likely to find sufficient replacements, research has shown.

Not all districts have experienced increases in teacher absenteeism, but those that do point to trends that reflect the broader U.S. workforce.

Employees in many professions are take more sick days since the pandemic. Women – who make up for it the vast majority of the working population in education – may also be associated with more childcare, because children more often stay home from school or childcare. (Mothers are 10 times as likely as fathers taking time off work to care for a sick child.)

Employees are also paying more attention to mental health. This is especially relevant for teachers, who have had to deal with increasing demands political pressure for the past four years, while he was paid less than comparably trained professionals and have less flexibility to work remotely.

“They are being hit with attrition,” said Ian Roberts, the superintendent in Des Moines, who has logged about 300 daily teacher absences this school year, compared to about 250 last year.

Teachers, who get built-in breaks throughout the year and during the summer, have sometimes faced criticism from parents for missing school. For example, parents in Newton, Massachusetts, are seeking damages for a teachers strike that led to 11 days off school this winter, and teachers unions have been criticized for their role in extending school closures during the pandemic. Research shows that a large number of teachers may be absent a negative impact about student learning.

Still, many teachers say they don't like missing school, in part because it takes a lot of work to prepare for and make up for any absences.

“It's easier to just go in and get through it,” said Tracey Bolton, a second-grade teacher in the Houston area who said she reluctantly missed school in November because of an extreme case of congestion and fatigue.

When teachers miss work, there are often not enough substitutes available to fill in. In Des Moines, officials can typically find replacements for just over half of the 300 daily absences.

The shortage of substitutes has become more acute since the pandemic, experts say fewer and fewer people are choosing the teaching profession compared to ten years ago, and it has been that way more teacher turnover during the past years.

As schools turn to long-term replacements for unfilled positions, fewer replacements remain available for teacher leave days, said Tuan Nguyen, an associate professor at Kansas State University who has studied the teacher shortage nationally.

The pool of substitutes has also changed, teachers say.

Some replacements were reluctant to return after the pandemic shutdown; others took different jobs and never returned. The pay for substitutes is average about $20 per houris less competitive in a strong economy.

If a replacement is not available, remaining teachers often have to do double duty: taking on additional students in their classroom or taking over another class at recess, which can require them to request days off in the future. Sometimes reading teachers or other specialists fill in, meaning extra support sessions — a priority to offset pandemic learning losses — are canceled that day.

“I think this has a huge impact on our ability to recover” from the pandemic, said Amanda von Moos, executive director of Substantial Classrooms, a nonprofit that has been trying to improve training and support for substitute teachers.

To ease the daily struggle, the Sacramento school district recently increased substitute teacher pay to $355 per day, or about $54 per hour, one of the highest rates in the country.

But this does not yet provide a solution to another challenge: filling replacement places at schools in areas with the lowest incomes. A study from Chicago found that paying substitutes up to 50 percent more to work in hard-to-staff schools can be an effective incentive.

The school district in Columbus, Ohio, has tried something different: assigning at least one permanent substitute to each school building.

Jacquelyn Golden, a full-time substitute teacher at a west Columbus elementary school, has built relationships with students, who confide in her and give her hugs in the hallway. When replacing, she wastes little time creating order because the students know her expectations.

'I've been in every room. There is not a child in the building that Mrs. Golden does not know,” she said.

However, the district will soon have to scale back the program because it was paid for with expiring pandemic relief funding. In the future, permanent replacements will only be assigned to the buildings with the highest needs.

For Ms. Golden, the bigger question is: Which schools aren't in need? Rarely a day goes by, she said, when her services as a substitute are not needed.