Sub-divided

When a teacher calls in sick or misses a day for another reason, schools rely on substitute teachers to fill in. But what happens when substitutes aren’t available – or aren’t willing to report to certain schools?

It's a question that even Henrico County Public Schools officials can't completely answer – even though the scenario has occurred more than 2,400 times at Henrico elementary schools during the past two school years.

Data provided by Henrico County Public Schools to the Citizen at the newspaper’s request paints a striking contrast between how often substitute positions went unfilled at schools in Eastern Henrico when compared to those in the West End.

Henrico elementary schools were unable to fill substitute spots on a total of 2,457 occasions during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years; more than 70 percent of those "fail-to-fill" days (1,642) occurred at just 14 schools – 12 in Eastern Henrico, two in Northern Henrico.

Were students in those classes moved to other classes for a day? Taught by an assistant principal or other administrator? School system officials don't exactly know, because the system does not require schools to compile or report that information, HCPS spokesman Andy Jenks told the Citizen. It's unclear whether any individual schools keep track on their own of what happens to classes for which substitutes cannot be found.

The school system has been using a program called SubFinder to manage and record data related to the placement of substitutes, Jenks said, but the program does not offer a way to note what happens to those classes, either. HCPS is implementing a new system in time for the coming school year, Jenks said, but it’s unclear whether that system will track such information.

But Ward Elementary School PTA President Angela Greene has seen firsthand at that Varina school what takes place when substitutes aren't available: principals and other administrators scramble to fill those spots themselves or split a class and send its students to other classrooms for the day. Neither option is ideal, she said.

"We've had the principal, assistant principals pulled away and actually had to sit in a classroom [and teach]," Greene said. "It was kind of disheartening for them, because they were still expected to get their regular work done even though they were shifted for the day. Some of them had to take an extended day, or some things just didn't get done."

Moving students to other classrooms can create similar frustrations, she said.

"I know it just disrupts the whole learning process for the day, because now the teacher has to adjust for these other children in her class," Greene said. "I don't think that the kids for that day really got a full day."

On at least two occasions this year at another Eastern Henrico elementary school, students in an affected kindergarten class were divided up and sent to second-grade classes, where they were provided with worksheets to complete, while the second-graders received their normal instruction.

Parents of the kindergartners were not notified directly by the school about what had happened, the parent of one kindergarten student told the Citizen. That parent received confirmation from the school's principal when she inquired about the matter after hearing about it from her child.

Geographic differences apparent
The data provided to the Citizen by the school system does little to dispel the notion championed by some citizens that certain Eastern Henrico schools face more educational challenges than their West End counterparts.

Nine elementary schools in the county each failed to fill substitute spots on more than 100 occasions during the past two school years; eight are in Eastern Henrico.

By contrast, 15 elementary schools in the county failed to fill substitute spots on a combined total of just 101 occasions during the same period; all 15 are in the West End.

Henrico Superintendent Pat Kinlaw was unavailable to comment about the issue despite several requests by the Citizen, but Jenks said that officials are aware of the statistics.

"The numbers seen in the fail-to-fill reports are something our administrators have been monitoring for awhile," Jenks wrote in an e-mail to the Citizen. "Consistent with our past practices on other issues, it would be appropriate for us to share our latest thoughts with our School Board first and then collaborate on any potential next steps."

By nearly all metrics, Fair Oaks Elementary School in Highland Springs has been the school most affected by the issue. Fair Oaks needed substitutes 1,167 times during the two years (fourth-most in the county) but failed to find them on 237 occasions (most in the county, by 66 occurrences), resulting in a "fail-to-fill" rate of 20.3 percent (worst in the county).

During this past school year alone, Fair Oaks failed to find substitutes on 166 occasions – nearly one every day of the 180-day school year. On the other end of the spectrum from Fair Oaks is Springfield Park Elementary in Innsbrook, which needed substitutes 882 times in two years and found them on all but one occasion.

School system officials were unable to provide details about how many times specific classes of students at any school were without substitutes during the course of the year, because the SubFinder system only displays data broadly – for grades K-2 and grades 3-5, Jenks said.

Fair Oaks PTA President Heather Despair told the Citizen that she was surprised to hear about the school's troubles finding substitutes and that she planned to discuss it with the PTA.

"I would be concerned that if there wasn't a sub, what is my child doing all day?" she said. "If this is an ongoing issue, then it needs to be addressed."

But, Despair added, her family and her child, a rising fourth-grader who previously attended private school, love the school and have never encountered any problems there.

"It's an amazing school," she said.

Failure to fill not tied to need?
The number of occasions on which a school needs substitutes does not seem to play a direct factor in how many times it's unable to get one, the data shows.

Half of the 10 schools that needed substitutes more than 1,000 times each during the two-year period – Fair Oaks, Glen Lea, Lakeside, Laburnum and Ratcliffe – also were among the 10 that failed to find substitutes most frequently.

But four others that needed subs more than 1,000 times apiece – Shady Grove, Colonial Trail, Dumbarton and Johnson  – each found them more than 97 percent of the time.

Shady Grove in the Far West End needed to find substitutes on 1,155 occasions during the two-year period; only four schools needed subs more frequently. But Shady Grove failed to find a sub only four times (a failure rate of just 0.18 percent).

By contrast, Donahoe Elementary School in Sandston needed substitutes on only 688 occasions but was unable to find them 115 times (19 percent of the time).

Why the stark disparity – even among schools that had similar needs for substitutes?

One reason may be that substitutes, for any number of reasons, are unwilling to work at certain schools.

Substitutes who are active in Henrico’s school system are required to work at least 20 days annually in order to remain on the list the following year, Jenks said, but they are permitted to select schools at which they are willing and unwilling to work.

Some choose to limit themselves to schools that are geographically close to their homes, for example. Others may choose to avoid schools whose students are perceived to have behavior issues.

When a school needs a substitute, the substitute coordinator for that school may choose to contact specific subs directly to extend an offer, Jenks wrote in an e-mail to the Citizen. Then, “if the job is not filled, the system would open the available job up to any substitute who matches the criteria for the job position,” he wrote. “The substitutes in the general substitute pool are called in random order.”

Once a substitute job is made available to the general pool of subs, qualified subs may claim it on a first-come, first-served basis, either online or by calling, Jenks wrote.

In theory, the SubFinder system allowed substitutes to reject job opportunities as many as four times each day – a maximum of twice during the morning calling period (6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.) and twice during the evening calling period (6 p.m. to 10 p.m.), according to Jenks, though it’s unknown how many times one potential sub would have been contacted with four different opportunities on the same day.

“However, if we see a trend in exclusions for a particular person or if he/she violates School Board policy, we can eliminate them from the pool,” Jenks wrote.

The schools that have the most difficulty filling substitute positions are among the worst-performing schools in the county on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests.

Of the 10 elementary schools with the highest fail-to-fill occurrences during the past two school years, eight were among the 16 Henrico elementary schools that failed to meet the achievement benchmark on the SOL tests in English during the 2014-15 school year.

Those eight – which as a result were only partially accredited by the state – were Donahoe, Glen Lea, Fair Oaks, Highland Springs, Laburnum, Lakeside, Ratcliffe and Varina. Highland Springs and Ratcliffe also were among the four Henrico elementary schools that failed to achieve the benchmark in math.

'There's some way you can do it'
Greene, the Ward Elementary PTA president who also serves as the Varina District vice president on the Henrico County Council of PTAs, served as a substitute herself for nearly a year recently.

"When you go online [as a substitute] to see where all the vacancies are, you typically don't see too many in the West End, but you see a whole host of them in the East End," she said.

Although she understands why more substitutes might seek roles in the West End – among other reasons, "everybody wants to be where the restaurants are," she said, only half-jokingly – Green would like the school system to show more urgency in addressing the matter in Eastern Henrico.

"If the push was to get more people who lived in the East End [to become substitutes], that would be great," she said. "There's some way you can do it."

Since last June, the school system has held at least 16 job fairs to recruit a variety of full-time and part-time employees. Three of those events – including one held this week – specifically sought substitute teachers. The others sought employees for various roles, including in almost every case full- and part-time school bus drivers – positions that almost always are in need.

Greene conceded that while her son, a rising fifth-grader, has gotten a good education in Eastern Henrico, she wonders about students whose parents are not as involved as she is.

"What about that parent who's not [proactive] and doesn't know how to speak about his or her child getting the attention he or she needs?" she asked. Those children, she said, "are not going to get that education."