On a day in a normal year, Mount Baker School District substitute teacher Nicole Kuklenski could start her morning teaching a ninth-grade biology class, spend a lunch break in the Special Education classroom to give instructional aids a break and finish her day in a physical education class.
Kuklenski, or “Mrs. K” to her students, has worked as a secondary education substitute teacher for 20 years in the school district. Now, with a substitute teacher shortage in Whatcom County and across the state, she said this has been the craziest year she’s ever experienced.
“This morning, we were down three subs, and I got a text from the secretary,” Kuklenski said. “I called her and said, ‘Do you want me to take two classes, so the vice principal doesn’t have to because he’s got enough on his plate?’”
As a career substitute, she knows the school, the students and the faculty, and will often take on more work than the average substitute. With the shortage, she’s said she’s doing even more to help other teachers and newer substitutes.
“My job is to come there every day, and to keep the kids safe, to try and minimize the impact on staff of whatever’s going on,” Kuklenski said.
This year, Mount Baker School District has just 91 substitutes and is hoping to hire 20 more to have adequate coverage. They recently lost substitutes because some did not comply with the vaccine mandate, others wished to teach online (which is no longer an option), or they were hired as full-time teachers, Superintendent Mary Sewright said.
Nearly 90% of districts in the state are struggling to hire substitute teachers, according to a May 2021 report by the Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board. Rural school districts, like Mount Baker, are especially impacted.
The school district is feeling shortages in other areas, as well. At the beginning of the year, they posted 489 certificated jobs and 93 were not filled, and 615 classified jobs were posted and 163 were not filled, according to the Mount Baker School District. Certificated jobs are teaching positions and other jobs requiring certifications, and classified jobs are support staff — bus drivers, custodians, secretaries and the like. Substitute teacher positions can be certificated or classified.
As schools operate through the coronavirus pandemic, teachers and staff face additional pressure to stay home while sick, creating a higher demand for substitutes during a nationwide shortage. If a substitute can’t be found, an elementary school class might be split up and sent to other teachers, an administrator might cover a class, or a high school teacher will skip their prep period to cover one period of a subject.
“If somebody is absent and there’s no coverage, it might be three or four teachers covering for them,” Sewright said. “That’s really how we handle it because we’ve got to keep school going.”
To mitigate the lack of substitutes, Mount Baker School District is helping applicants receive emergency certificates. They currently have six and are holding monthly training courses for new substitutes to give them a crash course on teaching in the school district. They’ve also employed people coming directly off student teaching with a temporary substitute certification.
With the rise of omicron cases earlier this month and teachers falling ill, the need only increased. Meridian School District returned to online learning due in part to the increase in cases and also due to the staffing shortages. Bellingham Public Schools sent out an email to the community asking for “families and community members to consider becoming a substitute or school volunteer” to keep students in classrooms and school operational. They, like most other school districts, are offering emergency certifications to people who have bachelor’s degrees and experience working with children.
Inconsistency already has, and continues to, take a toll on students as school districts try to stabilize after nearly two years of functioning through the coronavirus pandemic. A lack of consistent coverage for teachers does not help.
“We have great substitutes who work for us non-stop. They’re like regular staff,” Sewright said. “But anytime things are a little bit inconsistent, it takes a toll on kids.”
