Quinton Smith Substitute teacher Tina Bork of Waldport finishes up the day last Friday with student Parker Mills in a classroom at Waldport High School. Bork has been substituting in Waldport and Newport for four years after retiring from a teaching career in southern Oregon.

By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com

A severe shortage of substitute teachers has Lincoln County’s schools scrambling to find answers – and bodies.

So far, however, there are no easy solutions to help teachers and administrators cover what all acknowledge is a huge staffing problem.

“The school district is fully aware of how challenging it has been,” Lincoln County School District Superintendent Karen Gray said in an email to YachatsNews. “We are actively recruiting for staff in every area we are needing more people.”

The same dearth of substitute teachers that is bedeviling school districts across Oregon prompted Gray to declare Friday, Nov. 12 – the day after Veterans’ Day – a paid day off for teachers in anticipation of what she predicted would be a “massive substitute shortage.” The cancellation will cost the district $130,000, Gray told the school board Tuesday night.

A recent state-ordered relaxation in the standards needed to work as a substitute has failed to produce more people to work as substitutes. That’s led to the head of the teachers union in Lincoln County to argue that even more needs to be done to help overworked staff.

“We used to have 50 substitutes or more available, but there are days right now when getting a sub is impossible,” Peter Lohonyay, president of the district’s teachers’ union said. “There’s an all-hands-on-deck mentality, but the amount of teacher burnout taking place right now is incredible.”

Lohonyay credited Gray with her decision to give teachers Nov. 12 off. But he believes the district can do far more, such as temporarily relaxing the professional development requirements that he said are taking time and attention away from classroom activities.

“Teachers are not asking for freebies,” he said. “We’re just saying, can we slow down on certain stuff to make sure kids are getting what they need academically.”

Gray acknowledged that time spent on professional development “can be overwhelming – especially if it is about something new and different.” But, she added, “We actually build professional development time into our regular schedule so staff are having their professional development during early release Wednesdays when students are home. Professional development is a gift to our students.”

Lowering standards has not helped

Tensions are likely to increase as Lincoln County struggles to find more substitutes.

Educators here and around Oregon had hoped that the emergency substitute license, created in late September, would “significantly expand the pool” of subs by dropping the bachelor’s degree requirement to become licensed.

In issuing the order, the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission noted that in December 2019, 8,290 people held licenses to work as substitutes in the state. As of this September, that number had plummeted to 4,738.

The emergency license came with two conditions – it would only let people work in the district that sponsored them, and would be valid only for the rest of the school year, or six months, whichever is later.

No flood of new substitutes has emerged, and school district after school district reports having virtually no substitutes on any given day.

In Lincoln County’s case, the district is intent on making sure it has an existing relationship with anyone who might be sponsored under the emergency license. That means likely substitute candidates will come from the ranks of existing classified staff members.

“But providing a way for those people to teach as substitutes only leaves a gap in what they are already doing as classified staffers,” said Tiana Tucker, the district’s human resources director. “It really doesn’t solve the problem of getting new people in.”

A total of five potential emergency substitutes are now being processed under the new rule, she said.

While Tucker said she hopes that might names might still surface, it’s clear that a shortage of substitutes is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Turner said substitutes with teaching certificates make $200 per day. Substitutes with classified licenses make the rate for the employee for whom they are subbing.

She also said that the contractor the district pays to keep track of and recruit new substitutes has a number of incentives in place to sweeten the deal. Those include distributing Amazon gift cards, paying licensure fees and providing financial incentives for taking daily and extended-substitute jobs.

“We’re in a very different situation from urban areas, which can pull substitutes from longer distance,” she said. “We can’t do that. People won’t come to the coast to sub. If there’s an end in sight to all of this, I’m just not seeing it.”

Union asking for relief

Making matters even more challenging is the fact that so many students have missed nearly two years of educational opportunities and accompanying socialization due to COVID-19 and the distance-learning requirements that were in place before students returned to in-school classes this fall.

“We have eighth-graders in middle school who have never set foot inside a middle school before,” Tucker said. “And second-graders who are expected to have school dialed in, who are just now getting that experience. On top of our substitute shortages, it’s a lot.”

At Crestview Heights School in Waldport, Principal Mike Gass said that on any given day, he has from four to five substitutes he can dependably rely on.

“Last year it wasn’t a huge deal, since sick teachers could work from home,” he said. “We got pretty creative with that. So it’s just an unavoidable fact that, on some days right now, we’re short.”

The union’s Lohonyay still worries that, without further considerations by the district, things are going to get considerably worse in the months ahead.

“The district needs to wise up and emulate what bigger districts are doing to help their teaching staff,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. We are all happy to be back in our classrooms. But we are asking for relief, and we’re just not getting it.”

Gray responded that conditions, both for teachers and students, are going to get better.

“This is temporary,” she wrote. “We expect to be back to full strength at some time in the not so distant future and, in the meantime, we all pitch in to help kids learn.”