Westmoreland Intermediate Unit offers free course to help bolster substitute teacher ranks

On a school day in November, Allegheny Valley School District officials had 11 teachers off work and only one substitute to call in.

The district was considering using some of its American Rescue Plan funding to help bring in additional substitutes, serving as yet another example of a district struggling to find enough temporary workers. The struggle mirrors a larger issue of employee shortages nationwide.

In Westmoreland County, Norwin School District officials raised daily substitute pay last February by $15 per day and hosted a two-day training session to help find people interested in becoming substitutes. At the time, the district had 41 substitute teachers, half the number it had the year before (2019-20).

Greater Latrobe last year also increased its daily pay for subs from $90 to $110 in order to stay competitive with other districts.

To help combat the substitute shortage, the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit is offering a free online course in classroom management to help train a pool of candidates who have worked in a classroom or have completed some college classes but haven’t graduated. Potential applicants must be 25 or older and have 60 college credits from a Pennsylvania college or university or three years’ experience as a paraprofessional in a classroom setting.

Those who complete the course will receive a certificate that can be used to apply to the state Department of Education for official certification.

The course was made possible by Act 91, which the General Assembly passed last year. The law did away with some of the requirements for becoming a “classroom monitor,” a position with the authority to oversee a class but not to instruct students, grade assignments or create lessons.

The WIU class is part of a pilot program that will expire June 30, 2023. State education officials will then release a report on how it was used and whether it helped ease the pressure to find more substitute teachers.

For more, email jboone@wiu7.org or visit WIU7.org.

It isn’t just substitutes that are in short supply but teachers overall, as Pennsylvania now certifies about a third of the number of new teachers each year as it did just a decade ago, according to figures from the state Department of Education.

For the 2019-20 school year, the state issued just shy of 7,000 new education certifications — basically a state license that says a graduate is qualified to teach. That figure was more than 21,000 for the 2010-11 academic year.