Poudre School District hires staffing service to provide substitutes for classified jobs

Poudre School District is turning to a third-party staffing service to provide substitutes for its paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, health technicians, media specialists and others.

The move is meant to address the growing difficulty in finding substitutes for nonteaching jobs, with more than four in 10 going unfilled over the past two years, according to data shared with the Board of Education prior to its vote on the contract Tuesday.

The PSD Board of Education unanimously approved the contract for an estimated cost of $1.375 million with ESS West to provide temporary staffing services through June 30, 2024, for classified substitutes who can respond to emergency requests within a 24-hour period on a consistent basis. The contract can be renewed in one-year increments for an additional two years, according to the request for proposal PSD put out last spring. The actual cost will be determined through a formula based on the number of substitutes required and the contracted billing rate for the positions they are filling.

ESS is responsible for recruiting, screening, hiring, firing, supervising, dispatching and paying wages and expenses for those substitutes. The contractor is required to obtain criminal background checks and fingerprinting for all workers it provides PSD.

Substitutes from ESS will be used to fill instructional, noninstructional and special education paraprofessional positions as well as child nutrition team members, clerical office support and custodial/maintenance workers serving all 50 of its noncharter schools. All temporary workers must meet the district’s qualifications for regular employment in that position, and PSD reserves the right to hire any of the ESS substitutes into regular full-time or part-time positions with the district.

PSD will still provide substitutes internally for its licensed teaching positions, district officials said, although the request included the possibility of adding substitute teachers to the contract at a later date.

PSD has more than 30,000 students and 5,000 employees. A combined 150 to 200 substitutes for classified and licensed teaching positions are needed each day, said Deborah Meyer, the district's director of employee talent, acquisition and retention.

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The district hasn’t had the same difficulty finding substitutes for classroom teachers as it has had finding substitutes for its nonteaching positions, Meyer said Thursday.

The fill rate for licensed teaching positions was 84.3% in 2021-22 and 85.3% in 2022-23, according to data presented to the board. There were 10,198 worker days to fill in classified positions within PSD schools in 2022-23, and 4,361 of those (42.8%) went unfilled. In 2021-22, there were 9,069 worker days to fill in classified positions, and 3,764 (41.5%) went unfilled.

“As you can see in those numbers, the need is increasing each year, and our ability to fill those positions with substitutes is not matching the increased need,” Meyer said. “Coupled with the passing of 'Healthy School Meals for All,' Proposition FF, which allowed all students to have free meals at school, we have to be able to fill those positions.

“So, we could either continue doing what we have been doing and seeing the same results or try something new and innovative. ESS is the largest staffing provider in K-12, and they hope to achieve a 100% fill rate.”

District officials expect to not only fill more of those positions on a temporary basis, as needed, through the ESS contract, but also save money. PSD staff estimated it would spend nearly $1.31 million to support classified substitutes in the district for the 2023-24 school year without the use of ESS and would incur additional costs in staffing to support substitute services, recruitment costs, payroll taxes, workers compensation and required FICA/PERA contributions.

Meyer said it’s unlikely ESS will be able to fill every position every day, especially in the first year of this contract. The company can now begin recruiting and hiring people, including more than 100 people already serving as classified substitutes in PSD.

“We see this as a partnership, not just a, ‘Hey, fill these spots for us,’ ” she said. “We have a lot of licensed substitutes that also are classified substitutes, and we see them as very much integrated with our team to be able to provide our classified needs so we can better serve our community. The reality is we are going to support our students no matter what. We’re together as one team and sometimes that might mean an administrator jumps into the kitchen to help serve meals.”

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ESS was one of two qualified vendors that the district evaluated before negotiating the contract and was selected over EDUStaff after receiving a higher score from a panel of seven evaluators.

ESS provides staffing services for more than 900 school districts in 34 states, the company said in its response to the district’s request for proposal put out last spring. Four of those school districts — Littleton, Englewood, Mapleton and Adams 14 — are in Colorado, wrote Jeb Hoverter, the ESS director of business development based in Golden. The company has regional headquarters in Hillsboro, Oregon, and national headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“ESS was founded with the vision of becoming the most qualified provider of substitute teachers, paraprofessionals and education personal in the industry, catering exclusively to the K-12 market,” Hoverter wrote.

The company's website says it is the largest education-exclusive staffing provider in the country, with a pool of 92,000 substitute and permanent employees serving 5 million students daily and “filling 40 different types of substitute and permanent positions in 28,000 assignments each day.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: PSD hires staffing service to provide substitutes for classified jobs