The Kent School District trains its teachers through several means, but the most controversial right now is during instructional days. This means taking the teacher away from the classroom and providing a substitute. Or it should.
Kent is currently having a sub shortage. This is caused by several factors: lower sub pay and benefits than surrounding districts; no student teacher program/pipeline; turnover in our human resources department that leaves applications for subs withering in cyberspace; and a lack of respect given to substitute teachers by schools and students.
There is becoming a statewide shortage as well.
When a sub is not available to cover for a teacher in staff development sessions, the teachers in the building are pulled from counseling, libraries, P.E., music and other important programs or other classroom teachers give up their time to communicate with parents, review data, plan lessons.
In classrooms, this could mean a new teacher for students each 50 minutes, or more. It means students have to deal with a lot of change, a lot of different management styles and teachers who are filling in and have to read through lesson plans and may not be familiar with the materials or even grade level. It means lack of continuity for kids and programs. It means a teacher can’t answer a question in the hallway, or they leave 33 other students waiting for their temporary substitute. It means parent communication suffers.
Kent’s administration changes a lot of programs and has a lot of training each year. In our building this week we had five less subs than we needed to cover, and this is one out of 40 Kent schools. On Tuesday alone, we were short three subs. Many buildings have less dedicated subs and are always short more subs than our numbers reflect.
What will happen when flu season hits and teachers are ill? The real reason we have subs. This also puts stress on principals and office staff who devote an extraordinary amount of time rounding up teachers to cover classes, filling out paperwork and trying to bridge the gaps in coverage themselves.
Staff development is often grouped so that a classroom teacher is out multiple days in a row, meaning the impact to students is cumulative. With all the days/lessons missed for all the testing we now do, teaching and learning are already compressed and learning is slowed when the regular classroom teacher who knows the kids and the curriculum is not doing the teaching.
The current teacher contract calls for staff development to be canceled and for teachers to return to buildings when there are no subs for their classrooms. This is not happening, even when the district knows they are short dozens of subs over 48 hours in advance.
Is this really best for our students?
– Donna Pirog
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