Substitute Shortage : Schools Cutting Class Sizes Hire Many as Full-Time Teachers

Every time teacher Jim Mahon stands before a classroom, it’s like the first day of school.

Because the retired teacher now works as a substitute for the Capistrano Unified School District, he has to break the ice with a different class almost every day. So he has learned a few new tricks.

“I usually kid them about the names,” said Mahon, 69. “I take roll orally. . . . We kid around about how many Mikes we have or the number of Lindseys in the class.”

The former elementary school teacher, who lives in Laguna Niguel, had taught occasionally since retiring three years ago from the Visalia Unified School District in Tulare County. But he discovered this year that his expertise was much in demand.

As schools began taking advantage of state incentives to reduce class sizes in primary grades, hundreds of teachers like Mahon who had been working off and on as substitutes in Orange County were offered contracts and hired full time.

“I thought I would go back a couple of days a week, but within six months I was working five days a week,” Mahon said.

Joan Moe, Capistrano Unified’s personnel manager, said that “about 25 substitute teachers have come out of retirement in this district alone.”

School districts statewide are scrambling to fill the void when substitutes take permanent jobs. Administrators say the shortage will be even more acute next year, when districts that started class size reductions in kindergarten and first grade expand it to second and third grades.

“We have been in meetings on the impact of class size reduction, and always the issue of the substitute shortage comes up,” said Robert Salley, director of the certification division of the California Commission on Teacher Credentials. “We have also issued 3,000 [teaching credential] waivers for 30-day substitutes.”

To entice people to sign on as substitutes, some districts are increasing the pay. Orange Unified raised its daily pay for substitute teachers this year to $100, up from $80.

“At this point we are doing OK, but there are times such as with the recent flu that you have shortages,” said Bob Howell, director of human resources for the district.

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Across the state, substitutes’ daily pay ranges from $80 to $150, officials said. Permanent, full-time teachers typically earn $150 to $300 a day, said Walter Denham, manager of teacher education for the California Department of Education in Sacramento.

“It’s a matter of supply and demand,” he said, explaining that Los Angeles Unified pays substitutes as much as $150 because it has a shortage of qualified people in its pool.

The state pension system allows retired teachers to earn as much as $18,500 a year without losing benefits, said Wayne Johnson, vice president of the 270,000-member California Teachers Assn.

Ann Beavers, assistant superintendent of personnel administration at the Anaheim City School District, said the crunch has affected a number of programs, including staff development. In the past, she said, substitutes would teach so that regular faculty members could participate in training activities.

An unusual number of flu cases and other illnesses have made the situation worse this month, she said.

“On most days since Thanksgiving, we have been about 25 substitutes short,” she said. “All of our classrooms were covered by someone with a credential, but at the expense of other operations in the district.”

Sometimes principals put aside their administrative duties to fill in for ill teachers, Beavers said. And the district, which operates on a year-round schedule, has offered teachers $100 a day to work during their monthlong vacation to fill the gap.

“Class size reduction just tipped the whole thing over,” Beavers said.

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Another challenge, she said, is a new state law that requires background checks of potential school employees and forbids hiring anyone with a criminal record.

“It’s extremely difficult to get new substitutes processed,” she said, “because of the new fingerprint process. . . . Adding new substitutes has been slowed down by four to six weeks.”

Coaxing retirees back to the classroom is only a temporary solution, Beavers said, because most will eventually want to cut back their work hours to enjoy their retirement.

Mahon, who taught for 21 years before retiring, said Capistrano Unified officials offered him a full-time position teaching third grade, but he declined.

Instead, he will become a permanent substitute at George L. White Elementary School in Laguna Niguel, beginning in February.

He plans to work for just a few more years.

“Maybe I’ve grown mellow in my old age, but I enjoy teaching now more than when I was a regular teacher,” he said.