http://youtu.be/vO74UWMbfAc
Educators arrived at Las Cruces Public Schools job fair with résumés in-hand ready to fill positions as substitutes and full-time teachers.
The 24,300-student district is in the midst of a substitute teacher shortage. Chief Human Resources Officer Dr. Miguel Serrano said it’s nothing new.
“The need for substitutes has been basically district-wide. I don’t necessarily want to say that it’s one school over the other one. For example, sometimes where the flu epidemic hit us hard in January… there were some teachers more sick at other schools, so it’s not necessarily a one particular school issue, it’s a district-wide issue and it does vary from time to time,” Serrano said.
While the flu season hit the district especially hard this year, Serrano said there are other reasons for the shortage. He said substitutes are often promoted to educational assistants or leave for jobs that pay more, so they’re always in demand. Serrano said the district hires between 10 and 20 substitutes a week to fill the gaps and hosted the fair to increase the pool.
“We are working towards having these job fairs where we’re going to hire hundreds of substitutes like in April, having them in the summer and starting to be more proactive in getting our pool of substitutes to be so abundant that even if some of them get other jobs, get promoted - we’re not playing catch-up but we’re actually staying on top of the game,” Serrano said.
Serrano said he knows low substitute pay is another reason for the small applicant pool. The district’s starting pay for subs is $9.52 and goes to $11.59 an hour depending on education level and prior experience. That’s more than Albuquerque Public Schools, where starting pay is $8.85 an hour for contingency and educational assistant subs, although the next pay grades are slightly higher.
Among the more than 120 teachers who interviewed, three dozen applied for substitute positions, including Gilbert Gil. A Las Cruces native, Gil is applying to be a high school math and physics substitute. Gil said he recently retired from White Sands Missile Range after 38 years as an electronics engineer and wanted to help fill the shortage among STEM teachers.
“There’s no doubt we’re becoming an increasingly technological society and the educational system has to reflect that,” Gil said. “I think we certainly have a very good post-secondary college and university system, but more at the vocational and technical level I think more could be done to make people work ready and not necessarily with a four-year degree and I’d like to contribute to that.”
So does Irania Gamez, who said she has her substitute and educational assistant licenses but dreams of being a full-time teacher. While Gamez hasn’t taught yet, she said she began working as a recess monitor in August to make sure she’s fully prepared for the job. She also said the pay doesn’t mean as much to her.
“To me, it’s the experience with the kids because it’s something I enjoy so it’s more gratifying working with kids than the pay to me because I have children of my own so that’s my pay,” Gamez said.
But Gamez, who likes math, said she knows she has bills to pay.
“I’m fully aware that I need to pay my bills, you know what I mean? I’m fully aware of the pay and I think it should be a little bit higher because I don’t know if people are fully aware of the tasks and the energy that is put into teaching children,” Gamez said. “I think it’s very overlooked, I do think that it should be a little bit higher because a substitute teacher can do sometimes the same thing as a teacher normally can.”
Serrano said the district is looking at ways to increase substitute pay and is studying what other districts in the state pay their substitutes.
“Not that we want to structure our pay with what they’re paying but we want to see if the pay in our district is consistent to what other people are doing in the state or if it’s basically different,” Serrano said.
Some pay options Serrano said the district is considering include providing more incentives for substitutes with bachelor’s and master’s degrees or paying them a flat rate versus hourly. That’s what the El Paso Independent School District does, where non-degreed subs earn $70 for a full day while those with degrees make $80.
While Gil said he doesn’t need the pay, he said teachers who do need to be paid higher overall.
“There’s a lot of teachers on strike across the nation and I think they need to be heard. I think you get what you pay for and I think we need to pay our teachers much better than we’re paying them right now,” Gil said.
Educators in several states are striking for higher pay. After weeks of protests in Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey proposed to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020. That may not be enough, as Arizona teachers recently voted in favor of a statewide walkout.
