SYRACUSE, NY (NCC News) – Even before the pandemic, it was difficult for school districts to find substitute teachers because fewer people have been going into the field of education in the past few years. As a result, many substitute teachers were being hired as full-time teachers more quickly than they could be replaced. However, the hunt for substitute teachers will be even more difficult this fall because of additional factors keeping them away from classrooms.
Many substitute teachers will be forced to face the difficult decision of whether to continue educating students, subsequently risking their health, or leave their role as substitute teachers to limit potential exposure to Covid-19. For many, remaining safe takes priority.
Unfortunately for CNY school districts, many substitutes fall in one of the high-risk categories—older adults. This is because many CNY school districts often rehire retired teachers to come back and substitute teach for them. Dee Dee Hagemann, Principal of Solvay High School, explains this is problematic because she expects that many of her older substitute teachers will struggle with the decision to return this fall.
“Some of them [Solvay’s substitutes] are 70 years old and they still sub quite a bit. Now all of a sudden with a pandemic, do you want to put yourself in a position where you’re going to say ‘I’m going into a school whether there’s 250 or 500 kids in the building?’”
As it turns out, for one 78-year old substitute teacher at Solvay, the answer is no.
“I won’t be substitute teaching until there’s a one-hundred percent vaccine,” he says.
Steve Orlando was a teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius school district for 32 years. He then went to Solvay as a substitute for the next 22 years. Although he will miss working with his students, the real possibility of contracting coronavirus is too risky, and it is a chance he is not willing to take.
“I can’t control what they [his students] do,” Orlando says. “So I have to…control what I do.”
Like many other substitutes who are retired teachers, Orlando did not come back to substitute teach for the money, but rather for his love for the kids and passion for teaching. This means that Orlando and others in his position have the luxury of picking and choosing when they want to substitute and when they don’t. However, this may be bad news for school districts in the fall because many of these substitutes will choose their safety over returning to schools.
The solution to this problem isn’t simple, especially since Principal Hagemann says Governor Andrew Cuomo still has not provided many of the details surrounding which solutions will be acceptable and which will not. However, the one thing he has given permission for administrators to do is to hire substitute teachers who only have a high school diploma, a credential which was unacceptable on its own in years past.
“That gives us a chance to hire more people,” Principal Hagemann says.
However, Hagemann says the district usually prefers to hire people who have at least a two-year college degree, so she is hesitant about the idea of hiring people who only have a high school diploma.
“Will we do that [hire people with only high school diplomas]? I don’t know,” Hagemann says. “It depends on how bad it [coronavirus] gets.”
Another potential solution to the shortage of substitute teachers is utilizing current employees in the district, such as physical education teachers and librarians. Orlando praises this solution as it would allow many people whose livelihood is teaching to keep their jobs.
“I think it’s a great idea that they take advantage of the people they have so that they don’t have to lay everybody off,” Orlando says.
At the surface level, this idea may seem feasible. However, the issue of shifting around current teachers increases in complexity when school districts need to find replacements in specialized areas such as music and art. Principal Hagemann explains that the possibility of teachers in these specialized roles leaving is one of her biggest concerns.
“Then we’re going to end up having to find people, not subs necessarily but certified teachers in those specific content areas and we’re going to have to do that on a quick turn around,” she says.
Meanwhile, all of the planning that Principal Hagemann has worked on for the past few months with her administrative and leadership teams may have been all for nothing. This week Governor Cuomo is expected to make the decision on whether or not students can return to school in the fall. The answer could be a resounding no, a definite yes, or a range of other possibilities that fall in the middle.
In any case, Principal Hagemann says that in order to make the most informed decisions about how to move forward with many of the issues she is facing heading into the 2020-2021 school year, she will need more direction from those in higher positions than her.
“He [Cuomo] still needs to give us a lot more guidance, or New York State Education needs to give us a lot more guidance” Hagemann says.
