Districts looking to employment agencies to cut costs, time

By Corina Curry | ccurry@rrstar.com

As the use of substitute teachers increases across the country, more and more school districts are looking to private companies to help them recruit, train and manage their sub pools.

In 2014, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that most substitute teachers — 93 percent — were school employees and only about 5 percent worked for temporary employment agencies or services.

But that number could be shifting radically as more districts outsource their substitute teaching functions to cut costs and save time.

Professional Educational Services Group — a staffing company that specializes in substitute teacher placements in Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee and Florida — compensates for teacher absences in more than 500 school districts, representing nearly 15,000 schools and more than 1.3 million students. In May, the company announced a new contract with Rutherford County Schools, a 42,000-student district just outside Nashville, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, the 19-year-old Kelly Educational Staffing — part of the ubiquitous outsourcing company, Kelly Services Inc. — has contracts with more than 965 districts, including public, private and charter schools. It manages a pool of 45,000 substitute teachers in 35 states.

Michigan-based Kelly Educational Staffing has doubled the number of schools it serves in the past three years, from 3,000 in 2013 to more than 6,000 last year. Those districts range from the very large to the very small in places like Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana and Missouri.

“Up until a few years ago, growth was a steady pace,” said Scott Aspey, Kelly Educational’s vice president and practice leader. “What really was a driver a few years ago was the Affordable Care Act. Suddenly, districts started looking at a company like Kelly to help them manage this part of their workforce.”

Aspey says that time management is the main attraction for districts to Kelly Educational.

“It can be very time consuming to do the recruiting, maintaining the pool, doing the hiring,” he said. “Depending on what state you’re in, the requirements differ from state to state. We do all the checks and screenings. Especially in a smaller district, to have staff do that, it can be a big burden.”

Kelly also offers orientation and training for subs and provides districts with data analysis on absenteeism.

“It’s part of the service we provide,” Aspey said. “If we can, we assist the district in actually reducing the demand for subs by lowering their absenteeism rate or helping them to understand where it’s coming from so they can act on that.”

Marvin Goetz, a retired teacher who now works as a sub in Lee County, Florida, thinks he has a better and less-costly answer.

Goetz is president of the Lee County Association of Professional Substitute Teachers. The group is not a union, Goetz said. It’s just a group of like-minded substitute teachers working to make the system better for subs and schools.

“We are one of the few substitute teacher associations nationwide,” Goetz said. “We work hand-in-hand with the district. We’re a voice for substitute teachers.”

Goetz’s group helps the Lee County district recruit new subs. It helps manage the substitute teacher pool, serves as a liaison between subs and the district and fights for better pay. It awards excellence in substitute teaching each year with “Silver Apple” awards.

Lee County has 1,450 substitute teachers. Goetz would like to get that number up to 1,800 — one for every three teachers in the county. Goetz said he believes one-to-three is where the district should be to have enough subs to fill all vacancies year-round.

After launching the Lee County association in 2000, Goetz helped form the National Substitute Teacher Alliance the same year to help substitute teachers across the country work to raise awareness of issues and challenges in the substitute teaching arena.

District leaders in Lee County are exploring outsourcing substitute teachers, Goetz said.

“I think they have decided that I’m a better bargain.”