Unconventional Effort: Butler school district looking for guest substitute teachers
The Butler Area School District has received an overwhelming response to its unconventional effort to hire substitute teachers.
A letter the district sent to business leaders in the community Sept. 11 asks if they know people with bachelor's degrees who are interested in working as day-to-day guest substitute teachers.
“By the end of the day Monday (Sept. 14), we already had 20 inquiries about it, which is phenomenal for us,” Superintendent Brian White said.
More people have inquired since then, he said, but the total number wasn't available.
The state allows anyone with a bachelor's degree and appropriate security clearances to be issued an emergency teaching certification as a guest teacher with two days of training.
The people who responded to the district's request will have to go through criminal history background checks and obtain clearances required to work with children while the district checks to confirm they have bachelor's degrees, White said.That process begins after the prospective substitutes contact the district, and takes 15 to 20 days to complete, he said.The two days of training can be provided by the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV or by ESS, a contractor used by the district to hire, train and place substitute teachers. White said the training will take place at a district facility.Day-to-day substitutes can work in one assignment for up to 10 days and are paid $100 a day. They are often called on the day they are needed to work.“We call and say, 'We need you today,'” White said.A long-term substitute must have a degree in education or an emergency certification from the state, and can work for an entire semester or school year, he said. The district pays long-term substitutes $100 a day for the first 45 days they work and $150 a day thereafter.The district has a list of 150 day-to-day substitutes, but only about 45 are available on any given day, White said.Some on that list will only accept certain assignments such as specific grades or classes, some want to work only one day a week and some who work as substitutes in multiple school districts are sometimes not available when needed, he said.“We're at the point that so many districts are recruiting for substitutes that we used an unconventional path for recruiting subs,” White said.
