EDUCATION | FOCUS Shortage of subs plagues some schools BY ALEXA GAGOSZ | Gagosz@PBN.com
ASHLEY BREAULT WASN’T SURE what was happening those first few days of school in September. For a week, her 5-year-old daughter Maria didn’t have a teacher after Veterans Memorial Elementary in Central Falls reopened virtually on Sept. 14. “We finally got some type of communication after I complained,” said Breault, who also has a son in preschool. After finally being assigned a longterm substitute kindergarten teacher when Maria’s original teacher had to go on medical leave, Breault was told to pick up a packet of worksheets at the school. Her daughter completed the work within a day. Breault didn’t know the packet was supposed to last for two weeks. “How is that learning? That’s just not enough,” said Breault. “There needs to be more.” Schools that were scrambling to teach students through remote platforms on an emergency basis last spring are now dealing with another new pandemic-related problem this fall: fewer substitute teachers to cover classrooms. A shortage of substitute teachers is nothing new in many school districts, educators say, but the scarcity has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the Providence Public School District – Rhode Island’s largest – had 31 classroom vacancies at the start of the school year. District spokeswoman Laura Hart said part of the problem is that the
‘There’s just a lot of problems across the board.’ FRANK FLYNN, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals president
district has become stricter in how substitute teachers are used. Traditionally, if there wasn’t a substitute to cover a class, students would be dispersed to other classrooms. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the district is assigning long-term substitutes to buildings to keep groups stable. Maribeth Calabro, president of the Providence Teachers Union, said the pandemic has also hampered other ways the district has filled holes in coverage in the past, such as using students from local colleges. This year, that’s not happening. The workload for virtual learning is far greater than what the teachers anticipated and has caused some of them to pull double duty. “We do have teachers who have two rosters of 26 students as opposed to their in-person colleagues who teach 26 students all day at the elementary level,” said Calabro. “It is double the work and half the content over the same amount of time, which is a serious concern for our teachers who are worried about the learning loss for students.” Calabro said she understands the need for flexibility during the pandemic, but it should not come at the expense of quality instruction. Frank Flynn, the president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, said the teacher shortages vary by district but are most prevalent in urban areas. It doesn’t help, he said, that many substitute pools are made up of retired teachers who are less willing to return to the classroom since their age makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19. “There’s just a lot of problems across the board,” said Flynn. It’s not that these problems didn’t exist prior to the pandemic. COVID-19 has added to the personnel and infrastructure issues that schools CONTINUES ON PAGE 21
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