D93 Facing Critical Shortage of Substitute Teachers and Substitute Paraprofessionals

Posted Date: 09/21/2021

Please Contact Nancy at (208) 557-6821

We knew it would be a struggle but we weren’t expecting it to be this bad, this soon. 

“It’s worse than I thought it was going to be in the first three weeks of school,” said Nancy Peterson, D93 Substitute Teaching Coordinator. “It’s been really busy and we’ve had lots of positions that we haven't been able to cover.”

So what happens when there aren’t enough subs to cover? 

“What they do is they use the teacher’s prep hour and so they fill that class with a different teacher every hour,” said Peterson. 

This happened with six teachers at Thunder Ridge on Friday alone and it’s leading to teacher burnout. 

“If you know a teacher, you know that the last thing they want to do is take time off because it’s just such a problem for their class and they worry about their students,” said Peterson. “They just plug in as long as they can and then it gets to the point where they can’t handle it anymore.” 

That’s why D93 is trying to increase the amount of subs that are available and Nancy says there are some real incentives to being a sub. 

“The advantages are you can pick your days,” said Peterson. “You can pick your teachers. You can pick your schools. You can really work around your own schedule. This is great for parents who want to sub at their child’s school.”

You can also choose to sub as a Paraprofessional. The pay is the same but your efforts will be more individualized. 

“We have a lot of Paras in our school district that work with special education classes. We have one-on-one Paras who maybe will just sit with a student all day long, making sure they are on task and they are traveling from class-to-class. You'd go with them and make sure they could navigate the halls and get to where they need to be and just be one-on-one with them”, continued Peterson.

Unlike most jobs, this is something that you could ease into at your own pace.

“If you have one day a week that you could work as a substitute, we’d be happy to have you.” 

Please contact Nancy at (208) 557-6821 for more information about the D93 substitute teaching program.