‘Struggling for relief.’ Tri-City schools scrambling as COVID surge knocks out staff

Dozens of Pasco school employees lined up in the Edgar Brown Stadium parking lot Sunday afternoon for a special employee COVID testing event.

The school district organized the mass drive-through aimed at staff who were having symptoms, exposed to COVID or needed to be tested as a requirement for getting back to work. About 120 people were tested.

Pasco schools have been hit hard in January by the surge of cases brought on by the omicron variant. Last week the district needed substitutes to fill 175 teaching positions every day.

That’s nearly 7 percent of their 2,600 staff members needed to keep the district functioning each day.

The problem is the school district only had 75 substitutes they could call in.

“On a daily basis at every one of our schools, we don’t have enough substitutes to cover our teachers and our paraeducators who are out for various reasons,” Shellie Hatch, the district’s director of talent management, told a group of potential substitutes last week.

That has required teachers inside buildings to give up planning time to take over classes and put administrators back into classrooms to cover the shortage.

While Pasco is the only district to report how many substitutes they need, they are not the only one hit by the sudden staff shortages brought on by omicron.

Robyn Chastain, the executive director of communication and public relations for Kennewick schools, said they also have been relying on a combination of staff from inside the buildings and subs to cover the high number of staff that are out sick.

All of this comes as the districts work to keep students in classrooms.

Tri-Cities schools have been luckier than Yakima where COVID absences have meant they needed to move to distance learning.

Omicron is hitting the Tri-City area harder than any previous wave of COVID-19. Benton and Franklin counties together had 2,549 new positive cases per 100,000 for the two weeks ending on Jan. 13.

Staff out sick

Kennewick schools continue to be hardest hit by the omicron surge. The district reported 872 students and 82 staff members out sick with COVID last week.

A total of 2,031 students were out of school because they either tested positive, showed COVID-19 symptoms or came into close contact with someone who was sick.

That is more students than attend any of the three high schools.

Richland, which has largely been spared the worst of the earlier surges, is being hit just as hard.

It had 541 students who tested positive that had been on campus while contagious.

Hanford High had the most trouble last week with new cases, with more than a fifth of all the cases in the Richland district.

Pasco had 480 students and 85 employees who got sick last week. They also had 62 close contacts identified. Chiawana High School accounted for 82 cases.

District reactions

The problems around COVID-19 run deep, Kennewick Education Association President Rob Woodford told the Herald.

“Its effect on student attendance, the shortage of substitute teachers and the mind-bending amount of work being performed by educators is overwhelming,” he said.

“The biggest shortage we’re facing right now is a shortage of workable solutions. Every school district is scrambling for answers and struggling for relief,” he said.

Kennewick is continuing to recruit staff members including substitute teachers, Chastain said. People can find a list of available jobs on the district website.

The district is the largest employer in the city of Kennewick, with more than 3,000 employees working across its 32 schools. The district is presently hiring emergency substitutes. These are people with a four-year degree, but don’t have a teaching certificate.

Pasco is looking to recruit an additional batch of substitute teachers in the face of the shortages. The district started holding online meetings looking to attract people who are able to fill in for a day each week.

This new batch of temporary emergency substitutes are meant to fill in when there is a large number of teachers or paraeducators out.

“We are hoping they will give us a big enough substitute pool to cover us through the end of the school year,” said Anna Tensmeyer, the district’s director of public affairs.

The process is not fast, and does require a background check and either a COVID vaccine or an exemption, Hatch told her first group of potential applicants last week.

She plans to hold regular recruitment gatherings. Anyone interested can find information on the district’s website.