It’s not just teachers and bus drivers, Florida doesn’t have enough subs

WLRN | By By Danielle Prieur | July 17, 2024

Kelly Services, one of the country’s largest staffing agencies, is predicting a shortage of substitute teachers heading into the new school year in Florida and across the US.

Stetson University’s Rajni Shankar-Brown said a statewide teacher shortage is making a sub shortage worse.

Shankar-Brown said a smaller pool of subs are being asked to fill thousands of open teaching positions in Florida. And recruiting substitute teachers is complicated by low pay.

In Florida, subs are paid $14.81 an hour or $30,800 per year on average.

The minimum salary for teachers in the state is $48,000 a year.

She said in districts where there aren’t enough teachers or subs, students are at a great disadvantage.

“And sometimes that means that students end up being moved or shuffled into other classrooms, which is quite disruptive to the actual educational experience all around. In addition, sometimes students are being moved into an auditorium or moved into the cafeteria and told to basically educate themselves by bringing their own device,” Shankar-Brown said.

She said districts in low-socioeconomic and Black and brown communities are especially hurt by these shortages.

“High-poverty schools have even more challenges, often with securing substitute teachers, and higher levels of teacher turnover. So, even as we think about what students are being impacted the most, by this crisis, it is often our most vulnerable students, students who have been historically and socially marginalized, who again deserve to have access to educational excellence,” Shankar-Brown said.

To be a substitute teacher in Florida, you have to be at least 18 years old, have a high diploma and pass a background check.

At the end of the last school year, Florida’s statewide teachers union the Florida Education Association estimated there were still more than 4,000 open teaching positions throughout the state.

Experts say a number of factors including low teacher pay, poor working conditions, COVID turnover, and new educational policies are making it harder to fill positions.

Same goes for paraprofessionals and bus drivers in the state.

In order to increase the number of teachers, Florida schools like Valencia and Daytona State College are rolling out fully paid teacher training programs.