Hidalgo County school districts are continuing to struggle with widespread staffing shortages caused by the return of students and teachers to campuses during the latest spike in COVID-19.
Local educational leaders expressed concerns over likely shortages as the first districts returned to school last week, and the first full week back for many campuses has better illustrated those concerns and how districts are addressing them.
Although some school districts around the state have experienced closures because they can’t staff their campuses, Hidalgo County districts have so far reported managing to stay open despite those staffing shortages — although some have closed temporarily out of safety concerns.
Staying open despite those shortages, Weslaco ISD interim Superintendent Criselda “Cris” Valdez said Wednesday, is often demanding and far from simple, but it’s proving to be the norm.
“I think that faculty and staff are becoming accustomed, I think, given the situation,” she said. “Yes we have spikes, there are peaks and valleys that we go through, but we press on.”
A typical school day for Valdez this semester will start about 6:45 a.m. when she receives case data on staff. She’ll look at student data when she gets to the office about 45 minutes later, and then set about trying to plug holes in the district’s teacher workforce.
Those holes can be significant. About 13% of the district’s staff were absent Monday and Tuesday of this week, Valdez told her board Tuesday. About a third of those positions ultimately went unfilled.
Substitute teachers are a hot commodity in 2022.
Vanguard Academy advertised this week that it is paying substitutes who are degreed and certified $215 a day and permanent certified substitutes $225 a day — the “Best Pay in The Region” the school system touts.
Larger public school systems aren’t far behind.
At a board meeting last Monday, an Edinburg CISD trustee expressed concern over neighboring districts poaching substitutes and floated the idea of increasing pay rates; “money talks,” she said.
Edinburg CISD advertised last week that it needs substitutes and is willing to pay those with a degree and certification $200 a day.
That district reported about 11% of its teachers absent for its first week back from winter break and 3.8% of its staff confirmed COVID-19 positive.
As of last Monday, those numbers were proving manageable, Superintendent Mario Salinas told the board.
He said absences were divided unevenly among campuses, and that campuses had been able to deal with those absences internally.
“Some campuses do not have absences,” he said. “I know that for a fact, because I’ve been on the campuses. Not one principal had called me that they don’t have somebody to cover their teachers.”
In fact, Salinas said, he felt most of that spread to large-scale testing drives at the beginning of the school year and cases spread over the winter holidays.
“We are confident that if they come to school, where we have protocols in place, that the numbers are going to go down,” he said.
Numbers haven’t so far gone down, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard, but they also haven’t increased drastically.
The district reported 184 staff members positive for the coronavirus from Jan. 3-7, a number that increased by 28 for Jan. 10-14.
The district has taken a measure to cope with staffing and substitute shortages that campuses can’t deal with in-house, Salinas said, describing an emergency substitute pool of central office administration staff who will serve as certified teachers on call.
“So we have this list, and we’re going to give it to the principals, with phone numbers. And if the principal can’t find subs, they have this list to choose subs from,” he said.
There was some board concern over the qualifications of those individuals, concern Salinas largely dismissed.
“Almost all of these people, probably, are better certified than most subs that we use,” he said.
Using central office staff as stop-gap substitutes seems to be the norm for area schools who can’t find enough teachers.
Interim Superintendent Valdez at WISD says they’ve been using central office staff in a similar manner. In some cases, she said, student attendance is low and classes can be combined to make up for an unfilled absence.
Shifts can, Valdez said, be sporadic,
“I can’t think of a better group at adapting and pivoting than educators,” she said.
Valdez noted that staffing issues at schools are a national phenomenon. Could they cause a closure for her district?
Probably not, Valdez said — with a slight caveat.
“But of course,” she said, “you can never forecast or predict what’s happening given the circumstances.”
