SACRAMENTO, Calif. — School districts are scrambling to find substitutes as COVID- 19 protocols take teachers out of the classroom.
To manage the issue, Elk Grove Unified School District increased the pay for a substitute teacher to $160 a day.
"In this situation, we are looking at not just a one-day sickness, we are looking at (teachers needing to do) 10-day quarantine," said Xanthi Soriano, spokesperson for Elk Grove Unified.
The district is also having a job fair Thursday to try and recruit empty substitute teacher positions.
Sacramento City Unified School District also has openings to fill, according to David Fisher, president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association and a second grade teacher himself. He said those openings are on top of some teacher layoffs that the district made in the spring.
"At New Joesph Bonnheim when teachers are out due to COVID issues, the school has combined classes. So, we’ve had days... (where) instead of classes being 30, you might have 60 or 70 students," Fisher said.
Fisher said that the shortage is also leading to slower educational progress for students.
San Juan Unified School District has also raised the price for a substitute to $175 to compete for subs in a dwindling pool of prospects. In the meantime, the district is pulling staff from different departments to teach.
"Administrators (are) going into those classrooms to sub, we have district employees who are going in and teachers who aren’t assigned to a class and are on special assignment," said Diana Marshall, spokesperson for San Juan Unified.
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