Help for Chicago schools to attract substitute teachers

Of the less celebrated heroes, and heroines, in Chicago Public Schools, are substitute teachers: those that fill the void of absent teachers. While subs have been the butt of jokes for generations, even outside of Hollywood films, where they have long been standard comic fare, with scenes of spitballs flying through the air, amidst their desperate cries of “Class! Class!” as they struggled to bring order to the classroom; but in the real world of an urban public school system, such as Chicago, they are a necessity.

A recent report from Chalkbeat.com noted that Chicago subs, and the schools that they served faced, mounting challenges: “Chicago has struggled to recruit substitute teachers, particularly in the era of the gig economy, where residents looking for part-time work can turn to Uber or Lyft.”

Most glaringly, they showed that “An investigation earlier this year found that one in three teacher absences at majority black and Latino schools went unfilled.”

To help alleviate the problem, was the news that “District leaders say some new efforts, from promised pay bumps for substituting at hard-to-fill schools to relaxing restrictions on retirees, are starting to pay off. The teachers’ union, too, has also advocated and won cost-of-living raises for substitutes across its new five-year contract.”

The investigative report that they cite is from Chicago’s local public radio station WBEZ, whose education reporter, Sarah Karp, reported in August that, “CPS also has a severe substitute teacher shortage, a WBEZ analysis shows. At 62 schools, half the time a teacher was absent no substitute showed up.”

In a city with a long, and persistent history of racial segregation, “Here, again, there is a racial disparity. When majority black and Latino Chicago public schools request a substitute to cover a class, subs didn’t show up 35% of the time, data from September 2018 through March 2019 shows. That’s compared to 20% at majority-white or racially-mixed schools. Substitute teachers can turn down any school assignment.”

Working on a case-by-case basis, local school teachers were forced to give piecemeal instruction, for general education classes, but faced severe challenges with students with special needs, Karp added..

With the growing shortage of teachers in these schools, and the recently negotiated teacher contract there has been some movement, and she noted making the school district more equitable is a constant priority for officials.

“And nothing gets to the heart of the district’s inequities more than the reality that some schools struggle securing teachers while others are fully staffed, said Matt Lyons, CPS' chief talent officer.”

Increasing sub pay to hard to fill schools and professional incentives to bolster credentials are some ways that can alleviate the problem, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot has pledged to study the problems of teacher gaps, and attrition, that lead to vacancies and structural problems.

“We’re really excited about the moves we’ve made,” said Lyons in his interview with Chalkbeat, stressing that, “We really evened out the inequities in a lot of ways.”

“The new agreement between the teachers’ union and Chicago Public Schools awards substitutes annual cost-of-living raises of 3% to 3.5% over five years. That will boosts daily rates that currently start at $122 for day-to-day substitutes without teaching degrees to $226 for displaced teachers who have been waiting over a year to be rehired.”

Leading the way to further help was, “For the heart of the substitute corps — so-called cadre teachers who are on the payroll to accept most any assignment — the district lowered to three the average number of days per week they must accept jobs that come their way. Retired teachers can also work 120 days, up from 100, without losing their pension — a move in line with a new state law.”

Entering the fray is California based Swing Education to match educators to qualified subs in their area, and in an email interview with Jerry Lee, Vice President of School Partnerships, we were able to focus on some of the more pertinent problems that face Chicago schools.

SWING has definitely filled a need for substitute teachers, and this seems especially an issue for large urban school districts. In filling this need how are you vetting subs for large school districts such as Chicago?

 “Our team at Swing views vetting substitute teachers for schools and districts as a two-part process. First and foremost, we take the utmost precaution to ensure that the substitute teachers who work with us have the right certifications and credentials and that they have passed all of the necessary screening and background checks.

Although we’re confident in the effectiveness of our initial vetting process, we also understand that not every substitute teacher will be the ideal fit for every classroom. That’s why we’ve developed this technology that helps in matching the right substitute teachers with the schools that need them.

Swing’s product, which is essentially an online marketplace that matches schools with qualified local substitute teachers, allows schools and districts to easily find and then build a network of their favorite and local Swing substitute teachers.  Our platform, which allows schools to record and provide feedback on every substitute teacher experience, empowers school admins to start building a community of their own favorite Swing substitute teachers. They can also immediately unlink subs that they find less desirable for their unique needs and profile. The result of this process is the best possible sub pool for all of our school partners.

On the substitute teacher side, our product allows people to easily accept substitute teaching opportunities on-the-go, as they have the option of reviewing, then accepting substitute teaching opportunities via text notifications. To make it even easier, we’ve recently introduced an iOS app for our substitute teacher community. Substitute teachers are also empowered to opt out of accepting requests from certain schools and/or districts -- it’s entirely their choice!”

WBEZ cited problems in filling sub requests in low income, black and brown schools; how does SWING handle this challenge? How does SWING market the service to attract Black and Latinx teachers, that might be better poised to fill the need cited in the piece.

“One thing we’re very proud of at Swing is that the majority of our substitute teachers are drawn from and reflect the schools, students and communities that we serve. We are able to attract and recruit talent to successfully fill requests in lower income, minority schools because of the following:

Focused, experienced team: We have a dedicated team of Marketing and operations professionals whose full-time jobs year-round is to proactively find, vet, recruit, and onboard subs through every channel possible (paid digital ads, email, events, social media, website, local university and teacher prep program partnerships, marketing collateral, and meetups).

Attractive, easy value proposition for our subs: We cover all onboarding costs for our subs, including background check and sub license costs, and make it easy for them to be notified and access school partner assignments in real-time, both online and via text messages. Our goal is to help eliminate any barriers of entry for qualified substitute teachers to start teaching and contributing in the classrooms. Costs associated with setup and onboarding costs may be a barrier, especially for substitute teachers in lower income neighborhoods -- we want to help in breaking down this barrier.

Track record serving challenging schools: We’ve proven our ability to find subs who are passionate about working in challenging schools across eight different states (most recently Chicago): campuses in lower-income communities with high FRL, ELL and SPED student populations and large student-to-teacher ratios. Substitute teachers with Swing, many of who grew up or live in the local community, successfully serve our school partners in Southeast Washington DC, the South and West wards of Newark, NJ, South Central and East Los Angeles, East and West Oakland, Northeast Nashville and all the boroughs of New York City. Our early school partners in Chicago are located on the South and West side, and we’re working to develop a similar reputation of successful and thoughtful partnership with these campuses.”   

Locally, here in Chicago, there is a real need for special education subs; how can this be addressed, specifically, by your organization?

“The approach above allows us to specifically target and recruit subs for a variety of different school needs in a much more nimble and customized way than most other organizations. We’re able to quickly post ads and “turn on” recruiting for specific roles across multiple channels to meet specific needs of our school partners. This is true for “special education”, which entails a broad scope of possible roles, from paraeducators to speech language pathologists to early intervention specialists. The latter positions typically require graduate degrees and full teaching licenses with specific endorsements, while there tends to be a more untapped and flexible supply for the former. Schools in almost every state we work in struggle to find special education subs and Swing has been particularly successful finding and matching paraprofessional types of subs for our school partners. “

It seems that by using the resources of the internet, that you can reach a wider pool of candidates; does this seem to be true, to you?

“The internet, especially with the adoption of social media, has definitely widened the pool of potential candidates that we can reach. New, digital ways of targeting specific audiences through platforms like Google and Facebook have also allowed companies like us to show relevant information and optimized content to people who are more likely to be interested in substitute teaching in their local communities. However, I think that word of mouth is still one of the more powerful forms of marketing channels when it comes to building awareness for your product or service. This is especially true in our case, because we focus a great deal on creating a seamless experience for all substitute teachers as they interact with our brand through multiple different touchpoints or channels.” 

SWING seems to be a very young organization; taking this into consideration, what do you attribute to its strong record of success?

“Our company’s background in K-12 education -- and the extent to which our leadership team experienced the pain of the substitute teacher shortage firsthand -- has been really helpful.

For instance, Swing’s co-founder and CEO, Mike Teng, spent five years as a K-12 tech director, developing and identifying a solution to the organization’s challenges with substitute teachers. That experience was truly an eye-opening experience, and it provided Mike with a valuable perspective on the impact of substitute teacher shortage on schools and students. It also allowed him to see how companies like Swing Education could one day partner with schools and districts to solve this problem.

I’d also say that we’ve been fortunate to have a really solid team at Swing as well as some very important school and district relationships. There are a lot of smart, passionate, and mission-driven individuals who work with us (both substitute teachers and HQ staff), and we’re backed by a group of supportive investors who care about educational outcomes as much as we do. Those factors, along with many, many discussions with new and old connections in K-12 education, have helped us grow quickly and serve our school and district customers well.”

 How does expansion for SWING affect its focus on quality?

“I think that the primary way expansion impacts our focus on quality is in the number of employees we have hired and dedicated to providing substitute teachers and school customers with a great experience.

In our early days, we worked with only a handful of substitute teachers and school customers. So we didn’t need a huge team.

Now that we’ve grown to more than 2,000 school customers across eight regions, we have a lot more people working in areas like support, success, and substitute teacher compliance (ensuring all substitute teachers have and maintain up-to-date and valid certifications).

In addition to allowing us to expand our operations, our growth has given us the opportunity to invest heavily in our product and engineering teams. Developing a free iOS app (and soon to be released Android app) for substitute teachers, and rolling out new features for school customers each month, helps us deliver a quality experience to the schools and substitute teachers that work with us.”