At 7 a.m. each morning, Center Woods Elementary School principal Jess Potter and assistant principal Jacquelyn Cornwell start assessing how many staff members they will have in the building that day.
With an average of 15-20% of Center Woods’ staff absent per day, Potter tries to triage the open positions, identifying the classes with the greatest need for teachers, calling in substitutes and reallocating existing staff members from one position to another. She compares the process to a challenging daily “chess game.”
“The day before, we think, ‘OK, we can do this, we’re only going to need to cover four people, we can make this work,’ ” Potter said. “And then by the morning, it’s doubled because people are testing first thing in the morning or their symptoms develop overnight. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s just the impact on the school is tremendous.”
A mixture of COVID-19 cases and required quarantine time is leading to severe staffing shortages across New Hampshire schools this year. Every day it’s a scramble for administrators to cover enough positions to keep the schools running while substitute teachers remain in high demand.
At Center Woods, the shortages sometimes require administrative office staff to leave their regular duties to supervise lunch or recess, or the enrichment teacher and paraeducators to cover classes. Potter has occasionally taken over answering the phones when office staff is working directly with students. On “crisis days” where too many school employees are absent, SAU24 district staff – even Superintendent Jacqueline Coe – have pitched in to help teach classes.
In an effort to get ahead of the problem, Potter has started asking substitute teachers to commit a month in advance, not necessarily knowing if there will be absences to fill but assuming there will be. In the final week of January, Potter booked substitutes to work the final week of February.
“In a regular school year situation, somebody will say, ‘I’m going to be out next Tuesday,’ and we will call a sub and say, ‘Can you work next Tuesday?’ ” Potter said. “Well, because we know for sure that on any given day we’ll have 15% to 20% of our staff out, we’re just asking anyone if they can work well in advance.”
Colleeen Couhie, a substitute teacher at Weare Middle School, says her days are busier and more unpredictable this year than ever before. Couhie is typically at the school every day, usually taking on the roles of three or four – but sometimes as many as six – teachers, covering everything from classes to meetings to lunch duty.
“In the past, you could structure your day around things like, ‘I’m going to be this teacher,’ and get your mind into that mindset,” Couhie said. “They do the best they can to let you know what’s going on in regards to what class you’re going to be in, but I find that you get partial plans versus a full set of sub plans and you have to pull from your bag of tricks, keeping the kids engaged and making the best of a not-the-best situation.”
On Monday, however, Couhie had to stop working after she tested positive for COVID-19. Couhie, who says her symptoms are mild, is currently completing a five-day quarantine, the current requirement for the school district after the CDC guidelines changed in December.
“As a sub, and the fact that they have the limited numbers, it does make you feel a little like, ‘Oh, I wish I didn’t have to take this time off,’ ” Couhie said.
In the Merrimack Valley and Andover school districts, superintendent Mark MacLean says staffing has been a daily challenge, although no schools have had to shut down as a result of a staffing shortage. The district has about eight substitute teachers, and the district is in the process of recruiting more, including spouses and college-age children of current employees.
“Whether it’s due to their own personal exposure or diagnosis or that of a family member, many employees have been subject to isolation and/or quarantine,” MacLean said Thursday. “As a result, each day, administrators at all Merrimack Valley and Andover schools strategically juggle and allocate their personnel resources to ensure there is appropriate adult supervision for students.”
Concord School District has also been experiencing high numbers of staff absences. Concord has 13 full-time, permanent substitute teachers and 56 call-in subs, according to human resources director Larry Prince, and this year they’ve also been offering to pay teachers $40 an hour to sub for other teachers in their free time, which has helped.
Even so, last week staffing became so sparse one day at Rundlett Middle School that administrative staff from the district office, including Superintendent Kathleen Murphy, went to Rundlett to help supervise and monitor classes, according to Prince.
“It’s been high and we’ve struggled, but we’ve been able to maintain school being open,” Prince said. “We’re holding our own.”
According to business administrator Jack Dunn, the district has spent $138,000 on call-in substitutes so far this year, 65% of the $210,000 budgeted for call-in subs in the general fund. Dunn said the district’s budget for call-in subs is lower than last year, because the district had plans to hire more permanent subs. Right now it’s projected that the district will spend $295,000 of its $324,000 permanent sub budget.
Murphy has expressed concern to the Concord School Board several times this year that if the number of staff absences becomes too high they will be forced to close a school. Meanwhile, the New Hampshire state Board of Education is seeking to ban remote learning in most circumstances, allowing it only in instances of inclement weather or if a parent requests it for their child.
Most administrators say the pivotal decision to close a school would depend on whether certain key staff members are absent. For example, according to Potter, a shortage of key roles like school nurses or classroom teachers with nobody available to replace them would make for a critical situation. However, Potter says usually by the time they learn that a critical number of employees will be absent, the school buses are already full of students on their way to school, making it too late for administrators to close the building.
At Center Woods, Potter says she knows the absences have been tough on staff members, and some have even chosen to leave their jobs due to the challenging year.
“Some of our paras will come in assuming that they’re going to be with their preschool class or their kindergarten class, and then they get pulled to teach in a third-grade classroom,” Potter said. “It’s hard not knowing what your job is going to be every day when you have a contract and you believe you’re coming to school to be a certain person and you turn out to be a gym teacher. We’ve had wonderful staff stay with us, but we’ve also had people leave because there’s no consistency in their position.”
Couhie says she has also noticed burnout among her fellow teaching staff. She is encouraging anyone who is interested to consider becoming a substitute teacher.
“I would say if they’re interested in helping out their community, put in their application,” Couhie said. “Because we’re definitely in need of more numbers.”