Appleton schools have 100 fewer subs than before the pandemic. Here's why staffing problems are persisting.

APPLETON - For many years, the Appleton Area School District had a pool of over 500 substitutes, but for the past two years, that number has hovered around 390 to 400.

A shrinking number of subs and increased staff absences has created ongoing challenges for the district, said Julie King, the district's chief human resources officer.

Even without quarantine guidelines and the COVID protocols that colored the last couple years, school districts in the Fox Valley are struggling with substitutes and staff absences. This has been an ongoing problem for districts that are now facing increasing competitiveness in the labor market.

As administrators and other staff continue to spend their time subbing in classrooms, Appleton staff are still foregoing prep periods and pitching in in other ways to try to fill as many absences as possible. But even with that, 8% of absences — or about 73 per week — are going unfilled.

“We have concerns with how that wears on our staff,” King told The Post-Crescent.

Earlier in the semester, about 5% were going unfilled, but seasonal illnesses such as RSV are driving up absences, King said.

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For paraprofessionals — which includes roles such as special education aides, teacher's aides or someone to tend to students who are sick or injured at school — the fill rate is much lower. About 40% of those absences are going unfilled.

“Chances are, if a para is out, we won’t be able to find someone to sub in,” King said.

The subs AASD does have in its pool differ from previous years. It used to be that 3%-5% of substitutes didn’t have teaching licenses, King said. Because of changes to rules from the state, just under a third of current substitutes in AASD don't have a formal license but were trained by the district.

The district has been hosting walk-in interviews each week to try to fill vacancies for substitutes, paraprofessionals and teachers. Those interviews were more successful before the holiday season, but King said the district has been able to recruit a few subs from them.

As of Monday, there were 52 jobs listed on the online job portal Frontline Education. Almost half of them are for substitutes and support staff, including paraprofessionals and interpreters.

But King said the district is battling the competitiveness of the labor market. Some of those who might have subbed for the district — such as someone who graduated from college with an education degree at the semester — are now going straight into full-time vacant positions.

King often hears that people are hesitant to work in education because they never have before or they don’t know what to expect. She encourages those people to learn more and try it out.

“If anybody has a calling to support the community, there’s no better way than starting with our students,” she said.

The story is similar in the Kaukauna Area School District, which is seeing a 12% increase in staff absences this year compared to prepandemic levels. While this is down from the almost 30% increase during 2020, Superintendent Mike Slowinski said the number of jobs filled by external substitutes “fell off sharply.”

The district wasn’t able to provide a specific fill rate for external substitutes because the system it uses includes internal subs, such as when a teacher uses their prep time to sub for another class.

Slowinski told The Post-Crescent that the number of external substitutes have improved since the steep slide in 2020, but it’s still not at prepandemic levels.

To combat this, there are seven full-time substitutes who fill classroom vacancies across the district every day. The district also employs four long-term substitutes right now.

But even with those measures, the district still has to call on teachers, administrators and other instructional staff to use the time they would spend grading, writing curriculum or collaborating with colleagues to fill in.

“While our staff has continued to go above and beyond to help out, it will be critical for our district to find a more sustainable solution moving forward,” Slowinski said.

How to become a sub and what it pays in the Fox Valley

To become a licensed, short-term sub in Wisconsin, a person must hold an associate degree or higher and complete an approved substitute training program. Many districts provide their own training for short-term subs.

Substitute teacher licenses in Wisconsin are good for three years and allow someone to fill in on a short-term basis, meaning no more than 45 days in the same assignment. For anything longer than 45 days, a long-term substitute license may be necessary.

Before submitting forms, an applicant needs to determine whether they will need to submit fingerprints. The state Department of Public Instruction has an online questionnaire that asks where a person has lived, worked and gone to school. If fingerprints are necessary, they can submitted electronically.

After that, applicants will need to gather documents that must be submitted, including transcripts and training verification. Then, they are ready to fill out an online application that will ask for information such as name, Social Security number and any previous licenses.

The last step in the application entails submitting a final questionnaire and paying the $125 fee — which covers the cost of processing the application, according to the DPI website.

The DPI website lists current processing times; applications paid on Oct. 16 were being processed Dec. 19.

Districts have adjusted pay and offered other incentives in recent years to try to attract more substitutes.

Many districts in the area pay $130 per day for substitute teacher roles, including Appleton, Kimberly and Neenah. Many of them offer upwards of $200 a day for long-term subs.

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Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.

This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Appleton, Kaukauna schools still need more substitute teachers