Demand Keeps Substitute Teachers Busy In Valley Schools

Substitute teacher Leah Ann Howard taught the first day of the school year. Chances are she’ll work the last day, too.

“I haven’t had a day off in the last three weeks,” Howard said from her room-for-a-day at University Elementary School.

Howard represents a valuable commodity, an experienced substitute teacher. She stays busy working in just a handful of Central Valley elementary schools.

The three Valley school districts pay substitute teachers $80 a day. Freeman School District pays $75 a day.

Competition from Spokane’s School District 81, which pays $108.55 a day, coupled with an early round of colds and flu, has left Valley schools struggling to fill classrooms when teachers are out sick or for training or jury duty.

District 81’s salary inched up this year from $105 last year. The district has linked its sub pay to teachers’ base pay.

“Thirty five dollars more? Where would you rather go to teach?” said Nancy Harshman, who lines up substitute teachers for East Valley School District. Harshman also finds herself - “It’s just me, myself and I” - working in competition with Central Valley School District’s 24-hour “sub-finder” computer system.

“I’m running into a lot of challenges finding subs this year,” Harshman said.

At East Valley High School, Principal Jeff Miller is a veteran of the process of filling teacher slots. If there aren’t enough subs, he’ll ask teachers to take someone else’s class during their prep period.

“Or I can make a sub out of subs,” he says, explaining that he’ll fill in for an absent teacher by having substitute teachers rotate through on their prep periods.

Miller said he hasn’t noticed any recent surge in the shortage.

“They’re always scarce, and the good ones are even harder to find. They get scooped up by the buildings that like them.”

Howard has been “scooped up” by University, Chester, Progress and Sunrise elementaries.

“I’d hire her if I could find a place to put her,” said Phyllis Betts, University Elementary principal.

Howard moved to Spokane five years ago, leaving a position in Seattle teaching kindergarten.

“I never dreamed it would be so difficult to find a teaching job here,” she said. “There are advantages to subbing, though. You learn a lot. I feel as though I can walk in anywhere and teach.”

It’s fun, too, Howard says, to discover that she knows almost every student in each of her regular schools.

“I may not know all their names, but I will by lunch.”

Sometimes a half-day sub is all that’s needed. West Valley School District’s personnel officer, Sharon Moore, said it’s particularly difficult this year to find substitutes willing to work only a half day.

At Central Valley, even the computerized sub-finder program doesn’t solve the substitute challenge.

“I do know that our substitute shortage is worse this year than last year,” said Deanne Mellen, who coordinates substitute placements for Central Valley schools. “This year I began running out of subs before the start of October.

“I got a call from West Valley last Friday, looking for subs. But I was hurting even worse than they were,” Mellen says.

The Central Valley School Board recently agreed to extend the hours that retired teachers can substitute without sacrificing any benefits. Under the new policy, retirees could work as substitutes 112 days out of a 180-day school year.

“It looks like we’re coming into another teacher shortage,” said Jan Davis, Freeman School District business manager. “We were just talking about whether or not to place an ad for more (substitute teachers).”