Kane County schools need substitute teachers

On any given day, an absent teacher is tricky to address for school district administrators. In Kane County, it has become even more difficult.

The county has seen a gradual decline in the popularity of teaching in recent years, and a scarcity of substitute teachers followed. It's something Kane County Regional Office of Education officials say they haven't seen in a long time.

"In meeting with our schools this was identified as a real concern, especially when flu season hits and teachers need to be gone," said Deanna Oliver, assistant regional superintendent. "It's a significant problem. There's just not enough people out there."

Oliver said the gradual shortage of substitutes became apparent during the recession; it's also due to shrinking student enrollment as the state's population ages.

It wasn't always the case. For a long time, there were so many people lined up for both full-time and substitute jobs in the county that many good teachers didn't get a chance to stand before a classroom of students. It also was common at times to see people in the substitute pool with teaching degrees and not just substitute certificates, which require only a bachelor's degree in any field.

"We were losing great teachers because there just weren't enough jobs," Oliver said.

Now the opposite is true. So Oliver and her colleagues are launching a local marketing campaign to spark interest in teaching.

There also are efforts under way to remove barriers for people interested in a career change to teaching. Needing a teaching certificate is a major obstacle. But, Oliver said, there are faster paths to the classroom for people with certified technical training in fields such as welding.

The regional office has specialists available to help educated people find a path to helping students learn, Oliver said.

For now, districts such as St. Charles Community Unit District 303 must address teacher absences with some creative staffing.

For example, this past Thursday, 99 employees were absent in the St. Charles district, although not all were teachers. The district brought in 75 substitutes for classrooms that day, according to Mark Moore, the district's executive director of human resources.

He said District 303 isn't experiencing too much difficulty finding substitutes, because St. Charles schools are among the more sought-after teaching opportunities in the area. But calling in substitutes always requires a little luck, Moore said.

"They are all at-will employees," Moore said. "They don't have to say 'yes' when we call."

When there is a sub shortage, it's not unusual for a principal or top-level administrator to fill in. It's more common, though, for a colleague to take the classroom. In St. Charles, teachers lecture in five of eight periods; the other three include time for lesson planning. When teachers are absent, colleagues who fill in often lose that planning time.

It's the same story across the county. District 303 draws from a pool of roughly 500 substitutes, most of whom also are registered in most, if not all, of Kane County's nine K-12 districts. Those districts employ about 6,600 teachers, according to the regional office.