Some Erie County school districts anticipate looking for teachers 'up until the last minute'

Many Erie County school districts have an optimistic outlook about hiring full-time teachers and substitutes for the upcoming school year. But challenges remain as a national teacher shortage continues.

Last school year, the Erie School District lost nearly 100 full-time teachers to resignations and retirements, said Natalie Fatica, director of human resources for the district. The school year before, they only saw around 40 teachers leave.

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"Our salary schedule — particularly in the bachelor’s (degree) arena — isn’t quite as high as some of the other districts, and I think the change during the pandemic was a little difficult on people," Fatica said.

Coupled with many last-minute resignations this summer, Erie still had nearly 20 teaching positions to fill as of Aug. 17.

"The Pennsylvania Department of Education has given us a little leeway with emergency permits and student teaching, so that will help with the situation," Fatica said.

It's been a busy teacher hiring season for Erie-area school districts, but many are feeling confident they'll fill their classrooms this school year.

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A non-stop hiring process of districts across Erie

"The hiring process has not only been busier but more intense," said Ian Roberts, superintendent of Millcreek Township School District. "We started very early anticipating the nationwide teacher shortage would likely have some impact on us, so we were able to get some traction very quickly."

The district hired nearly 40 new full-time teachers, almost double the number it hires in a typical year, Roberts said.

"We started in fall of last year with a recruitment campaign," he said. "Last year was the first year we utilized billboard ads and television outreach, so we were really aggressive to fill positions."

High teacher turnover in Wattsburg

Ken Berlin, superintendent of the Wattsburg Area School District, said hiring started in late spring, which is early for his district.

"It’s just been non-stop as we learn of openings and we start the process with the next people," he said. "We've had about 17 teacher turnovers, which is a lot. I’ve never seen this many at one time, it’s normally two to three, if that."

Berlin described the current hiring situation as a "teacher's market" because teachers have more choices of where they want to work due to the shortage.

"We’ve lost a lot of teachers to other districts ... Location has a lot to do with it and then money is usually second," he said. "(Hiring) is going to be up until the last minute, but we still anticipate being fully staffed," Berlin said.

The district invested in more advertising than ever before, which also helped it fill bus driver positions. Several districts that lacked drivers last school year, including Wattsburg and Millcreek, expect to have full fleets and return to their normal bus routes this year.

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Cathedral Preparatory School, which now includes what had been Villa Maria Academy and Prep students, also anticipates starting the school year fully staffed with teachers and bus drivers. Prep secured its teaching positions through the community relationships its worked on building up, said William Pituch, vice president of academics and student affairs.

"One of the things we’ve started doing over the last two to three years has been developing more relationships with the local colleges and universities," he said. "If we have an opening I have contacts at each one of them."

For more targeted subjects, like theology or foreign languages, Prep turns to national job posting sites such as Indeed. Pituch said the hiring process has changed.

"You definitely have to work harder now than you did a few years ago to get a good applicant pool, or in some instances, it’s just been to find one very good applicant," he said.

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Filling substitute positions successful so far

Berlin said Wattsburg is finding new ways to fill day-to-day substitute positions.

"We used to call them when we needed them, but now we’re finding it’s so competitive that now we try to staff each building with a sub who comes every day," he said.

Berlin described the position as a "permanent, floating" sub, which guarantees they'll have substitute work for the entire school year.

"They just don’t know what class or subject they’re going to be in, but we’ve had some success with that," Berlin said. "We’ve also raised our sub rate to $120 a day, which is really competitive for this area."

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The Erie School District also raised its daily sub rate — which is now $212 a day — and implemented a system of permanent subs, which has helped mitigate its empty classrooms, Fatica said.

"We have academic support specialists and related-arts teachers, so there’s an order in which we fill positions," she said. "We also instituted a district educational support teacher, and that's generally a certified teacher or someone working toward a certification."

There's still a possibility teachers will have to cover for other teachers if subs aren't available in both Erie and Wattsburg, but the districts might decide to compensate teachers who give up their planning periods to substitute for another class.

Berlin said the arrangement has put a lot of stress on the district's full-time teachers, which is why they've switched to employing the help of the education staffing agency ESS, in hopes to avoid the internal coverage.

Roberts is confident Millcreek's teachers will not need to cover for one another.

"We have an environment where teachers are always willing to do that, but we anticipate we will have subs in place," he said.

Millcreek expects to be fully staffed, but some teachers coming from other districts are under a 60-day hold time that will still be in effect once classes begin. Until then, Roberts said his district plans to fill its classrooms with substitutes.

"For the most part we’re trying to pull subs from the same pool," he said. "We want to make sure every single classroom has a teacher in front of our students, so that’s what we’re working toward. We really believe we will have more than enough subs."

Growing need for mental health care providers

In addition to finding enough teachers and substitutes to fill schools, districts are also seeking out mental health care specialists to provide students.

Brittany Hayden, vice president of clinical services at Sarah Reed Children's Center, a mental health support service, said the need for mental health care providers in schools increased when the pandemic began.

"The emotional health needs of students have exponentially increased to the point where we didn’t slow down a lot in terms of referrals, even during summer," she said. "The need is so high."

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Sarah Reed provides outpatient services in six Erie school districts, as well as Cathedral Prep. In 29 schools, more than 30 clinicians and mental health staff are being utilized.

"It depends on the number of referrals we get, but I can confidently say we’ve increased the number of school districts we’ve serviced just in the past two years," Hayden said.

But over the years, Sarah Reed has experienced more demand for their services than they can provide, which is an issue happening nationally in the mental health field, Hayden said.

"It really varies what’s going on with a particular student, but there have been moments, especially throughout the course of this last year, where we had more referrals than we could address immediately," she said. "I think it’s fair to say there are more mental health needs than can be supported by the current economic situation."

In order to meet districts' needs, Sarah Reed has gotten creative by using a variety of staff, specifically its interns and graduate students.

"Our schools are still getting high-quality intervention and therapeutic support while we’re also training this next generation of clinicians in the field," Hayden said. "So it really has been about being flexible, being creative, trying to use the resources we have to support the growth and development of new clinicians so they can go into the field and try to meet the high demands where our kids and families are right now."

Baylee DeMuth can be reached at 814-450-3425 or bdemuth@timesnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @BayleeDeMuth.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie schools to fill full-time, sub jobs amid PA teacher shortage