The state of Ohio made it possible for high school graduates without a bachelor’s degree to become substitute teachers which has made great improvements on the hunt to fill staff shortages.

Allowing recent high school graduates to apply for substitute teaching licenses lessened the demand on teachers having to give up their plan bells to cover classes according to Jeff Miller, assistant principal at the high school.

“Our teachers have been great this year and they still are, they’ve been picking up lots of extra bells during their plan. We have some teachers that are doing that on almost a daily basis. We’ve even had a couple of recent graduates come in and sub,” said Miller.

There are many factors that come into play when dealing with staff shortages in a school, some schools closed down not only from teacher absences but other faculty and staff members.

“There was kind of a perfect storm of a lot of things going on and whenever we talk about staff shortages obviously we talk about teaching staff,” said Miller. “We talk about our peer professionals, our bus drivers, people who work in the lunchroom, so there are lots of pieces that are more than just the teaching staff of course that goes into it.”

With Covid situations worsening, and the job market widening daily, the road back to filling staff positions has shown its share of problems in the past year. 

“So obviously Covid was a big push. With that, we had a lot more people out sick or out quarantined or people with, you know, extenuating health circumstances that permitted them from working, and in general there are staff shortages in other industries that have been more attractive to some people to go out and find jobs in other places sometimes. So it’s become more of a competitive work environment to fill custodian roles, to fill bus driver roles, some of those kinds of things have been challenging because there are a lot more jobs out there,” said Miller.

The teachers here help out to keep the school from temporarily closing on account of staff shortages by covering for other teachers’ bells.

“Usually, like today there were a few teachers who were uncovered and we kinda have to sub for each other, and that’s been a pretty common thing since I’ve been teaching here. I think that just kinda has to do with maybe subs, like I know it’s harder to find substitute teachers nowadays maybe because of different factors of Covid, some people don’t want to go into a school full of kids they don’t know and be exposed to potentials with that,” said Ryan Frambes.