Wake will pay substitute teachers more to keep schools open for in-person classes
Updated Jan. 5 with approval of the plan
Wake County school leaders want to pay $2.1 million to attract enough substitute teachers to keep schools staffed for in-person instruction for the rest of the school year.
The Wake County school board voted 7-2 Tuesday to provide substitute teachers with up to an extra $425 a month depending on how many days they work. The proposal comes at a time when there is difficulty finding enough teachers to staff schools due to COVID-19 quarantines. The quarantines have prompted the district to suspend in-person instruction through Jan. 15.
The extra pay runs through the rest of the school year. Administrators say they can dip into the district’s savings to come up with the $2.1 million in “temporary substitute incentive pay.”
The extra pay is being coupled with a new “We need you, they need you” marketing campaign designed to increase the number of people who are willing to serve as substitutes.
Under the plan:
▪ Substitutes who work at least 5 full days in a calendar month will receive $100 of additional pay each month.
▪ Substitutes who work at least 10 full days in a calendar month will receive $250 of additional pay each month.
▪ Substitutes who work at least 14 full days in a calendar month will receive $425 of additional pay each month.
Wake currently pays substitute teachers $103 per day if they have a teaching license. Those who don’t have a license get $80 per day.
Wake saved at least $4 million last school year from not paying for subs when only online classes were offered at the end of the school year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Difficulty finding enough subs
The need for substitute teachers increased when Wake started bringing students back for in-person classes in October. The need will be even more acute in the second semester, which starts Jan. 20 for most schools.
Barring any last-minute changes, Wake plans to offer daily in-person classes for all elementary school grades and a mix of in-person and online classes for middle school and high school students. Only the 77,284 students in the Virtual Academy would not have any in-person classes next semester.
But Wake school leaders say it’s getting harder to staff schools. While there are 3,000 substitutes on the books, Superintendent Cathy Moore has said only 250 to 300 regularly pick up work at a time when Wake needs 400 to 500 a day due to teacher absences.
“Our own district’s data shows very limited spread of COVID-19 in our schools, a testament to the incredible effort of our teachers and staff in creating and maintaining safe environments for our students,” the district says on its website.
“However, our staff is not immune to the rapid spread of the virus in the greater community. When cases increase, so do the number of our employees who are required to quarantine as a result.”
In December, Moore said they only found enough subs to fill 64% of the daily teaching vacancies compared to 80.7% in October. Administrators said that it would likely get harder staffing schools due to the expected post-Christmas COVID spike.
North Carolina has a record number of people hospitalized for COVID and saw more than 18,000 new confirmed cases reported statewide the first two days of the year.
Plan draws mixed response
Some praised the idea of paying substitute teachers more during the pandemic.
Wake County Families and Teachers to Safely Reopen Schools tweeted Monday that the plan is “a step in the right direction for our county.” The group has been lobbying for months for a quicker school reopening.
But some people complained it’s a dangerous way for Wake, which is the state’s largest district, to maintain in-person instruction.
Others complained that Wake was only providing “hazard pay” to substitute teachers.
“So subs get extra pay for working during a pandemic but classroom teachers in the building with students don’t,” Renee White, a Wake teacher, tweeted Monday.
Anna Bazemore, a parent at Root Elementary School in Raleigh, tweeted Monday that the plan “is a slap in the face to all school employees who work tirelessly daily.”
“If anyone should be paid more, it is our full time school employees,” Bazemore added.
But unlike subs, full-time staff get benefits, according to David Neter, the district’s chief operating officer.
A.J. Muttillo, assistant superintendent for human resources, also said that instructional assistants will be eligible for the incentive pay if they serve as substitute teachers. He also said that substitute teachers are tentatively among the group of school employees scheduled to get COVID-19 vaccinations.
Board members Karen Carter and Roxie Cash were the lone dissenters. They argued the plan was unfair to the district’s full-time staff.
This story was originally published January 4, 2021 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Wake will pay substitute teachers more to keep schools open for in-person classes."
