School districts in Butler County are not immune to the shortage of substitutes across the state, and they are using a variety of means to combat it.

The Seneca Valley School District had about 250 substitutes available for the 2015-16 school year, according to Linda Andreassi, communications director. This year, the district plans to continue hiring substitute teachers through September, Andreassi said.

The shortage seems to be diminishing slightly, which Andreassi attributes to new initiatives by the school.

“For us, it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as it was last year,” Andreassi said. “We attribute that in large part to a November 2015 recruitment meeting we held for parents interested in substitute teacher or teacher assistant positions.”

At Seneca Valley, substitutes are paid $90 per day for the first 30 days. After that, they receive $100 per day. Retired teachers who return as substitutes receive $125 per day.

On an average day, the district has 22 open positions that need to be filled at all nine schools, according to Andreassi.

She said the district has no plans to consider outsourcing substitutes.

In the Butler School District, there were 122 substitutes available in the 2015-16 school year, but only 56 of them were willing to work regularly, said Superintendent Dale Lumley.

“Those 56 were not sufficient to meet our needs,” he said. “When teachers are absent and we are unable to find a substitute, other teachers must cover or combine classes and that puts a strain on everyone.”

For the first 30 days, a substitute receives $80 per day, $90 per day for days 31 to 60, and $95 per day after that, Lumley said. Those pay rates have been in place since 2006.

To address the shortage, the district hopes to use more “guest substitutes” through the program run by the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV, an education support agency that serves the 27 school districts in Mercer, Lawrence and Butler counties.

That emergency substitute program trains individuals with a bachelor's degree to be a substitute when there is no certified teacher available.

On the other hand, the Mars School District outsources its substitute teaching position to Precision HR Solutions/the Delta-T Group, meaning the substitutes are employees of that company and are not eligible for enrollment in the state teachers' pension system. The district has to pay into the pension fund for teachers enrolled in the plan.

The company pays a flat rate, $90 per day, according to Suzanne Walsh, the executive director of Precision HR Solutions.

Walsh said the district has a 90 percent fill rate.

The district has a call list of 115 substitutes with 30 percent wanting to work at Mars on a daily basis, Walsh said. She estimates that 20 percent only look for work intermittently.

The average daily need at Mars is around 20 substitutes, Walsh said.

The South Butler School District also outsources its substitute positions, with 70 available teachers in the 2015-16 school year, according to Superintendent David Zupsic.

The district outsources to Kelly Educational Services, which fills about 90 percent of the openings, Zupsic said. The daily average need is about 43 substitutes.

“Like most districts across the state, we are feeling the effects of an overall sub shortage,” Zupsic said. “Last year we committed two permanent substitutes (one at the secondary and one at the elementary) in mid-November to help with this need.”

South Butler and Mars both experience higher needs for substitutes during the spring months, in March, April and May, according to both Zupsic and Walsh.

“The spring is the greatest need, it's vacation time (for the subs) and the weather starts to get nice (and) when the districts have testings or they require a large amount of subs to help with the testing periods,” Walsh said.

The spring is when the majority of standardized testing occurs, like the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests, the Keystone exams and Advanced Placement testing.

What causes shortage?

“The substitute shortage right now is statewide,” Lumley said.

“Two key factors have decreased the availability of substitutes: fewer education majors graduating from colleges and the limitations placed on the use of retired teachers to serve as substitutes.

Walsh seconded that, saying that fewer people are going into education.

For example, at Slippery Rock University, the number of undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Education has declined since 2011, according to data available on the university's website.

In the fall 2011, there were 2,273 students studying education, and that number dropped to 1,815 students in the fall of 2015. The lowest was 1,703 enrolled in 2013.

Almost 23 percent of the bachelor's degrees conferred in 2008-09 at the university were in the education field. In 2014-15, the percent dropped to 10, with the lowest percent of the college's degrees coming from the College of Education in 2013-14, at 7.7 percent.

Another difficulty in keeping substitutes for long periods of time is the pay rate, Walsh said.

“Ninety dollars is the average in the state of Pennsylvania,” she said. “I think everybody would love to see them make a little bit more money to make it feasible to stay substituting.”

Walsh said many substitutes start substituting in the hopes of finding a permanent teaching position, she said, and working as a substitute full-time can be financially difficult.

“They may substitute teach during the day and have some additional employment in the evenings and weekends,” Walsh said.

She estimates 80 percent of substitutes are looking for a permanent job in teaching, and if they can't find it, they leave the profession.

Solutions

One solution that districts in Butler County use is the IU's emergency substitute program, training those with a bachelor's degree to be a substitute when there is no certified teacher available.

In the emergency substitute program, individuals attend a three-day training, learning strategies for classroom motivation, positive behavior and how to handle disciplinary issues.

All emergency substitutes in this program must have the same clearances that a certified teacher has, including FBI fingerprinting, a Pennsylvania Child Abuse clearance and a background check, Hess said.

There are typically two trainings each year, one in September and one in February, with an average of 50 to 70 candidates for each training. But a third training may be coming up this year.

“Because of the need, I think I'm going to offer a third training in December,” Hess said.

For this school year, the program has 230 substitutes so far, according to Hess.

The substitutes can work in any of the districts in the MIU consortium, including 27 districts, three vocational-technical schools and one charter school in Butler, Lawrence and Mercer counties.

Another solution on the table is a bill, already passed by the Pennsylvania Senate and now in the House, that would allow eligible college students to substitute at a school, vo-tech or intermediate unit for a limited number of days.

Senate Bill 1312 seeks to allow college students enrolled in a “teacher preparation program” at a Pennsylvania university to substitute. The student would need 60 college credits before receiving the proposed Substitute Teaching Permit for Prospective Teachers.

This permit would allow the student to work for up to 10 days in a school year for a single school district and no more than 45 days per school year for multiple districts, according to the bill.

The permit would be valid for one year and could be renewed for one additional year if the student completes 15 more credit hours and remains enrolled in college.

SB 1312 passed in the Senate June 30 by a 48-2 vote. Senators from Butler County, Scott Hutchinson, R-21st; Elder Vogel, R-47th; and Donald White, R-41st, voted in favor of the bill.

The bill is currently in the House education committee.