Sonoma County education officials sound alarm over worker shortages

Sonoma County education officials have launched dual letter-writing and recruitment campaigns hoping to boost the amount of available substitute teachers and staff as schools scramble daily to fill vacancies amid severe shortages.

Steve Herrington, Sonoma County superintendent of schools, sent a letter to local legislators this month sounding the alarm about a lack of staff, a backlog of antigen testing needed to keep students in school and issues with the state’s new independent study requirements.

“Keeping our schools open and in-person has become a 24/7 job,” his letter read. “Our teachers and school site leaders are doing everything possible to focus on wellness and learning acceleration.”

In line with trends affecting schools across California, the shortages of substitutes and other staff has collided with the increased demands of COVID-19 precautions, making school a hectic and exhausting endeavor just a few weeks into the new academic year, school administrators said.

“I have been a superintendent for more than 10 years, and have led Wright Elementary School District through four years of fires, school closures and COVID,” wrote Adam Schaible, superintendent of the southwest Santa Rosa elementary district, in his letter to Healdsburg Democratic Sen. Mike McGuire.

“None of these prepared me for the unrelenting 24/7 crisis-level management brought about by the current conditions,” Schaible said.

Compounding challenges

It’s difficult to get a precise scope of how severe the shortage is across Sonoma County. But John Laughlin, head of human resources for the Sonoma County Office of Education, provided an estimate of how many substitute teacher requests are going unfilled across the county each week: anywhere from 20 to 50 positions, he said.

“This year's situation is unprecedented,” he said. “We already had a sub shortage (heading into this year) but what we know from the first few weeks of school is that it is worse than ever.”

Laughlin estimated that in years past, he saw about 10% of this year’s numbers of requests going unfilled.

Many substitute teachers are full-time teachers who have retired, and some have exited the system over concerns about their health in the classroom, Laughlin said. At the same time, however, demand for substitutes has increased during this school year as teachers and staff, like students, have to quarantine, at times, after COVID-19 exposures.

When a teacher is out and a substitute cannot be found, another teacher will sometimes double up with an instructional aide to help cover two classes, Herrington said. But often, other qualified staff are pulled off their jobs to fill in in the classroom.

Sometimes counselors are tapped. Many other times, principals step in.

“You’re talking about an elementary principal teaching a class all day long who’s not available in the office,” Laughlin said. “A lot of responsibility falls on a school secretary. Then, after the day’s over, the principal goes in and tries to be responsive to their emails and parents’ calls — the big and little things that come up throughout the day.”

Loretta Kruusmagi, a senior secretary at McNear Elementary in Petaluma and chief negotiator for the district’s chapter of the California State Employees Association, said that she has lost track of how much overtime she has logged so far this school year.

“When we can’t get people, it’s harder on the people that are left,” she said.

Dana Pedersen, superintendent of the Guerneville Elementary School District, said that the demands of contact tracing and enforcing other COVID protocols divide school staff’s focus from their usual academic and social emotional goals.

“First and foremost, schools’ focus should be on teaching and learning and providing support services and not all this health care oversight and noise,” she said.

Schools have at times resorted to asking students who work one-on-one with paraprofessionals to stay home if the person is out.

Debra Ryan, special education director for the Windsor Unified School District, sent a letter to parents of students receiving in-class support warning them that the shortages were affecting their ability to secure substitutes.

“In the event that the district is unable to secure appropriate coverage for your student to ensure safety, you may be asked to keep your student home until your student’s paraeducator is able to return, or until a substitute can be secured,” her Sept. 7 letter said.

Rebekah Rocha said her daughter, Gigi, a sixth-grader at Windsor Middle School, was presented with the choice to either stay home when her support staff member was absent, or to go into a special-day class, which is a self-contained special education classroom.

Neither option works well for Gigi, the elder Rocha said. She feels worried that her daughter and others who rely on similar supports will repeatedly be asked to stay home or change environments throughout the year.

“This is not happening with typically developed kids, where they’re telling them not to send their kids to school,” Rebekah Rocha added.

Avenues for relief

Educators are hopeful that the cleanup to the budget bill will provide some relief. The superintendents who wrote letters to McGuire met with him virtually as a group to discuss their needs.

Pedersen said she was encouraged McGuire had grasped the significance of their requests.

“We do feel heard,” she said.

One of the solutions addressed in the cleanup bill, McGuire said is extending the cap for short-term substitutes from 30 days maximum in the same classroom to 60 days. That should help with scheduling and stability for students, administrators said.

“When you find a substitute that fits ... there’s nothing better,” McGuire said.

SCOE is also working to reduce barriers by eliminating or reducing fees for interested substitute teachers to be cleared and enrolled in its system.

Fees can often stack up to around $300, especially for first-time applicants, Laughlin said.

“We’re down to less than half of that,” he added.

Education officials are still advocating for another proposed fix that is not addressed in the cleanup bill: raising the cap on post-retirement annual earnings, which they say is preventing qualified, available subs from stepping up.

The current limit for retired members of the California State Teachers Retirement System is around $48,000 annually. They are not allowed to earn more than that per year.

It doesn’t take long for substitute teachers to hit that threshold, Pedersen said. And retired administrators face similar earnings limits under their retirement system.

McGuire said conversations about changing those limits are “ongoing.”

McGuire and others stated the need to increase pay rates for employees, which some districts have already done to try to attract more candidates. While other factors are at play, it’s a critical step, they said.

“Almost every sector is seeing employment challenges and public education is no different,” McGuire said. “I’m not saying that pay is the only issue but it is a significant factor, especially in a tight job market.”

Interested applicants can find more information about the process to become a substitute teacher at https://www.scoe.org/pub/htdocs/substitute.html

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.