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 long-term 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 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 have always had, some educators say.
“There’s a sub shortage in a good year,” said Darlene Netcoh, president of Warwick Teachers’ Union, Local 915. “Every district is raising the daily pay [for substitutes] to attract more. So, they’re all in competition of each other.”
Hart said the Providence school district is hoping to recruit up to 50 more long-term, certified subs and 50 more per-diem teachers with bonuses of up to $2,000, depending on the number of days worked in a row.
Flynn said getting a handle on the staffing needs statewide was made more difficult because plans for reopening schools were evolving until just before the first day of school.
Robert Stewart, president of the Woonsocket Teachers’ Guild, said it was just two weeks before schools were set to open that Gov. Gina M. Raimondo and the R.I. Department of Education announced that every district except Providence and Central Falls had the green light to reopen.
“And then, just days before starting, our district told us that we would [hold in-person classes], and it caused child care issues for so many teachers,” said Stewart. “They didn’t want to not teach, but they couldn’t leave their children at home.”
Those teachers, Stewart said, applied for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which requires employers to provide paid sick leave for reasons related to COVID-19.
These classrooms now need substitute teachers.
“And it’s not just subs when you’re out or are sick,” said Stewart.
Both he and his wife, who both teach in Woonsocket, recently had to wait five days to return to the classroom until they received their results from the state-run COVID-19 testing center for staff and students.
While waiting for results, teachers still have to instruct from home, but a substitute will have to be in the classroom with the students.
Back in Central Falls, Breault said she’s picked up another 17-page packet of homework for her daughter, who still doesn’t understand why she’s not seeing her regular teacher.
Breault said her daughter asks her every day: “Mom, where are my teachers?”
Alexa Gagosz is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Gagosz@PBN.com.
