COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE joint with the SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
NORTH OFFICE BUILDING HEARING ROOM 1
MONDAY, OCTOBER 2 6, 2 015 10:06 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS
HOUSE COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: HONORABLE STANLEY E. SAYLOR, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE HAL ENGLISH HONORABLE MARK M. GILLEN HONORABLE HARRY LEWIS HONORABLE BERNIE O ’NEILL HONORABLE KRISTIN LEE PHILIPS-HILL HONORABLE CRAIG STAATS HONORABLE WILL TALLMAN HONORABLE DAN TRUITT HONORABLE JAMES ROEBUCK, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MIKE CARROLL HONORABLE PATRICK HARKINS HONORABLE PATTY KIM HONORABLE MARK LONGIETTI HONORABLE STEVE MCCARTER
SENATE COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: HONORABLE LLOYD SMUCKER, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE ANDREW DINNIMAN, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
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NAME PAGE
HON. PEDRO RIVERA SECRETARY, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION...... 6 ACCOMPANIED BY TERRY BARNABY, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP AND TEACHER QUALITY, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
ERIC ESHBACH, Ed.D. SUPERINTENDENT, NORTHERN YORK SCHOOL DISTRICT, PA ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS...... 41
MICHAEL LEICHLITER, Ed.D. SUPERINTENDENT, PENN MANOR SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, PA...... 49
ROBERT S. BERNHARD DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES, SCHOOL DISTRICT OF THE CITY OF YORK...... 56
WAYDE KILLMEYER, Ed.D. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MIDWESTERN INTERMEDIATE UNIT #4...... 86
FLIP STEINOUR DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCE SERVICES, LANCASTER-LEBANON INTERMEDIATE UNIT #13...... 88
REBECCA ROBERTS-MALAMIS, ESQ. IN-HOUSE LEGAL COUNSEL, AND ASSISTANT TO THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BUCKS COUNTY INTERMEDIATE UNIT #22...... 93
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
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(See submitted written testimony and handouts online.) 1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: I would like
4 to call this joint hearing of the Senate and House
5 Education Committees to order today. We're examining the
6 shortage of substitute teachers. And I'd like to thank
7 everyone who's joining us here this morning, and very happy
8 to do this with Chairman Saylor and the House Education
9 Committee.
10 When a teacher misses school for a variety of
11 reasons, whether it's illness, family leave, vacation,
12 study, or other unforeseen reasons, we know that absence
13 has a ripple effect across the classroom, the school, and
14 the district.
15 And shortly after I became Chair of this
16 Committee earlier this session, I heard from
17 Superintendents in my district of the need for substitute
18 teachers and the additional difficulties in finding
19 teachers to fill available positions. And then since then
20 we've heard this same issue emerge time and again in the
21 news and in other areas of the State.
22 So that really is the impetus for today's
23 hearing. We're simply looking at the issue, learning more
24 about how widespread the problem is, and then we want to
25 hear about some of the causes. We've heard in some cases, 4
1 the Affordable Care Act, regulations around that, new State
2 child protection laws and the lack of new teachers in
3 general are all among the factors that are impacting this
4 shortage.
5 But we also hope to get to some potential
6 solutions, some cost-effective solutions that have come
7 from individuals that I ’ve spoken to, as well as from many
8 others across the State. And w e ’ll be hearing from a
9 number of testifiers who are well qualified to speak on
10 this.
11 So with that, I ’ll open the floor to other
12 Chairmen, Chairman Saylor for opening comments as well.
13 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I ’m not really
14 going to make any opening comments. I ’m thankful that the
15 House and Senate are both addressing this issue and look
16 forward to hearing from testifiers today.
17 I would ask the Members to keep their questions
18 short at least in the first round so we make sure everybody
19 gets an opportunity to ask questions, as well as we keep on
20 a timely schedule since at least the House is scheduled to
21 go into session at 1:00.
22 So with that, Chairman.
23 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Chairman
24 Dinniman, any comments?
25 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Not much 5
1 other than to say that -- to echo what the other Chairs
2 have said, that it's necessary to find out the causes and
3 the solutions. It seems to be a problem that varies in its
4 intensity whether one is in an urban area, whether one is
5 in a suburban area, or whether one is in the suburbs. Some
6 places it's worse than others, and we need to get at the
7 causes and the solutions.
8 I mean, for example, Senator Smucker, in your
9 area it's both rural and suburban and city. I have not
10 heard as much about the problem in Chester County, but I've
11 read a great deal about the problem in the City of
12 Philadelphia so I know it's real.
13 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you.
14 Chairman Roebuck.
15 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
16 I certainly am very pleased to be a part of this
17 discussion today. I recognize that in my school district
18 the issue of substitute teachers has become a major issue
19 and one that seems to be spinning out of control. So I
20 look forward to the discussion to possible solutions, and
21 hopefully, we can design some quick remedies to address
22 what is a critical problem. Thank you.
23 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you.
24 And with that, we'll go to our first testifier.
25 Secretary Rivera, thank you very much for being 6
1 here today. We look forward to having you being part of
2 this discussion today. So you can proceed with your
3 testimony.
4 SECRETARY RIVERA: Thank you very much. Good
5 morning, Chairmen from both chambers. Good morning. I ’d
6 like to thank the General Assembly for the invitation. I
7 promise not to take too much time in my introduction to
8 allow enough time for questions and answers and to allow us
9 to engage.
10 So two general housekeeping updates I ’d like to
11 share with everyone, first, in front of you we've changed
12 the packets, a page or two in the packets that you have,
13 not very substantial changes. We realize with the
14 information that we shared with you over the weekend some
15 of the numbers were so small, the end was so small, if you
16 wanted to dig deeper, you could identify the actual
17 individuals, so we wanted to maintain integrity of the
18 process and ensure that through open records we protected
19 those school districts whose numbers were small enough to
20 become where their individual employees would become
21 identifiable. So we just changed out some of the aggregate
22 information to meet with reporting standards of practice
23 and to remain and to maintain integrity of the data.
24 Secondly, I have to be honest and share with you,
25 first, I want to acknowledge a team of folks who worked 7
1 very hard to pull information together, data together to
2 really create a story, to create a narrative around this
3 challenge of substitutes. As we've noticed, when you try
4 to paint a picture, there isn't much information out there
5 in terms of just raw data to collect and pull together. Of
6 course there's trend analysis data, of course there's
7 college and higher education information, but as we tried
8 to paint a picture, we realized much of the information
9 shared is anecdotal; much of the information shared is
10 qualitative. So we tried to pull as comprehensive a report
11 for you as possible given the material and the information
12 that we had.
13 And of course, as the day goes on we're looking
14 forward to taking as many notes as you do and then working
15 together to implement any changes that would best support
16 students and communities of our schools across the
17 Commonwealth.
18 You are going to hear some of the challenges
19 around substitutes and the identification and the placement
20 of substitutes across the Commonwealth. And you're also
21 going to hear the implications of many of those challenges,
22 first, of course, classrooms that may go unserved or
23 unmanned with a qualified quality individual.
24 We also have to share with you that as we're
25 looking at substitute teacher service and the need not only 8
1 about having the teacher in front of you, but there are the
2 lost classroom hours as well. What happens when a school
3 or a school district can’t find or can’t solicit enough
4 substitutes to meet the growing needs of absences?
5 Many school districts will move forward and split
6 classes and send students to other classrooms, which will
7 then increase class size to a number greater than they have
8 now. Some will move and reduce or will cancel humanities
9 courses for the day. Where you may hear specials, art
10 class, music class, a gym class, other elective courses,
11 teachers may be asked to cover classes throughout the day
12 and students may lose those much-needed classes and those
13 great opportunities, as well as the many challenges in
14 terms of lost preparation time, issues that impact climate
15 and culture, and just trying to find the best and the
16 brightest individuals to serve in our schools.
17 So I ’m sure much of the information that you have
18 in front of you w e ’re going to have opportunities to
19 dialogue around conditions, around expectations, around the
20 general data from higher ed to the K-12 system and beyond.
21 So with that, I ’ll thank you again for allowing
22 me to be here and open it up for discussion. Thank you.
23 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Mr. Secretary, I
24 was just looking at your presentation here and some of the
25 colors. It does look like Philadelphia and Region 4, which 9
1 is up in the, I believe, Potter County area to the west of
2 Tioga County in that area, it seems to have the biggest
3 problems. In the northern part of the State I would assume
4 some of that has to do with maybe being they're so rural
5 but I take notice to the Region 1, which is the Erie and
6 rural areas, they don't seem to be having much of a
7 problem. They seem to be one of the best areas of the
8 State.
9 Am I to assume the same thing? Is that region,
10 the State Region 4 in the north around Potter County down
11 through to Centre County, is that because it's rural that
12 there's a lack of substitutes there or is that something
13 similar that they may have Philadelphia?
14 SECRETARY RIVERA: So it's very interesting when
15 you look at the lack of substitutes and we start to
16 identify county by county urban districts, rural districts,
17 and even suburban districts are finding great difficulty in
18 identifying and retaining substitutes, especially this year
19 where we've seen tremendous spike in that substitute need.
20 And that one time where the trends were not as aligned or
21 significant across the Commonwealth, I may have thought
22 that that could be one of the reasons, just proximity,
23 travel time, conditions, conditions and weather.
24 But I will share with you what we're noticing
25 across the Commonwealth is a real shortage of substitutes. 10
1 And as we've been engaging in conversation with
2 Superintendents, with Principals, and individuals
3 themselves, it ranges everywhere from, one, the pool is no
4 longer local. We remain a significant exporter of college
5 graduates from the colleges of ed to other States.
6 Also, we have heard low pay and lack of benefits
7 as being one of the issues were you can, for example,
8 receive--look for very similar jobs in the health care
9 industry, for example, and put it the number of hours
10 needed to receive health care benefits. Scheduling
11 difficulties where the school day starts very, very early
12 and lets out, so substitutes who may have families of their
13 own having difficulty maintaining the schedule; the
14 increased professional development and training mandates to
15 qualify someone to meet the needs; and then of course one
16 of the biggest factors that we've heard has been school
17 climate.
18 Over the past number of years many of the support
19 schools, especially some of the schools with the largest
20 numbers of vacancies in place, many of the schools have
21 lost some of their support system, whether the Assistant
22 Principal, Deans, Counselors, increased class size, and
23 programs. So substitutes may choose to work based on
24 school climate and conditions, may choose to work in
25 schools that have lower class size and all of those 11
1 supports in place.
2 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I just noticed
3 also Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have a substitute problem,
4 at least based upon the data you provided versus
5 Philadelphia. Actually, the Pittsburgh area region seems
6 to be one of the leading areas of the State where they are
7 able to find substitutes. So it’s interesting between the
8 two major cities, east and west, that there’s a real major
9 problem between the two. So I ’m going to stop there and
10 let other Members ask questions at this point.
11 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Chairman
12 Dinniman.
13 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Good
14 morning, Mr. Secretary.
15 SECRETARY RIVERA: Good morning.
16 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Who in the
17 Department has supervision to examine the solutions to
18 this? I mean this is a problem that we all have noted. Is
19 there someone who has responsibilities to resolve it?
20 SECRETARY RIVERA: I was remiss earlier in not
21 introducing my colleague, who’s here with me here today,
22 Terry Barnaby, who works with certification and works with
23 our teacher preparation initiatives and the like.
24 So specific to an office, a department, a person
25 responsible for substitute teachers, we don’t have a 12
1 department of substitute teaching per se, but we have a
2 number of individuals that work -- Terry facilitates in
3 that work with us in our departments -- that will support
4 the process and the technical needs of substitutes,
5 certificates, for example, credentialing, and the
6 identification. For the most part, substitute teaching
7 services, whether if facilitated in-house or contracted out
8 to a third party, are a local school district decision.
9 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: If this
10 problem has evolved to the point it has, would it be of use
11 for the Department to have a task force within it or a
12 coordinating committee within the Department?
13 SECRETARY RIVERA: It's interesting. Of course,
14 at the surface, you'd always say, yes, you want to provide
15 the best service and support you can to all of our school
16 districts across the Commonwealth. I think as we dig
17 deeper, and I'll put it out there transparently and
18 honestly, one of my greatest concerns in looking to do them
19 moving forward is capacity.
20 First, when you're looking at 500 school
21 districts across the Commonwealth and 750 total LEAs that
22 exist, to really engage in a practice that is one of local
23 control and to help implement change for each of those
24 individual LEAs would require a great deal of inclusion, a
25 great deal of conversation and to really work strategically 13
1 across the Commonwealth locally because this isn't
2 something that can be solely done from the center that's
3 there, from Harrisburg. This is something that -- and as
4 the Chairman explained, we have a rural communities,
5 suburban communities, urban communities that have the same
6 need all as a result of different conditions. So we have
7 to be very, very inclusively if we wanted to engage in the
8 change of practice.
9 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: So are you
10 suggesting, then, that since the Department doesn't have
11 the capacity right now and has many other issues that it
12 has to deal with that this is a problem that needs to be
13 resolved so some coordination with -- that IUs have that
14 responsibility to work with a district or every district,
15 and that if it's every district, that the testimony we get
16 today in terms of alternative certification for substitutes
17 or to continue the way we are requires a legislative
18 change? I mean what are you suggesting if the Department
19 is not the answer?
20 SECRETARY RIVERA: So my suggestion would be -
21 we meet, we try to meet regularly and we've met a number of
22 times with the four Chairs, the Department of Education and
23 the four Education Chairs. I would say we collect the
24 information that's being provided today, the information
25 that we've already collected from the field both in the 14
1 K-12 system and the higher ed system. We sit together and
2 strategize a system, a system of process but a system of
3 support to ensure that the process ensures that w e ’re not
4 mandating anymore but providing a great deal of service and
5 support to school districts across the Commonwealth. So my
6 suggestion is we can work together to come up with a
7 process that’s comprehensive, that isn’t another mandated
8 process but one of support to school districts.
9 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Well, I ’m
10 sure everyone here doesn’t want another mandated process.
11 I think you can get agreement on that. But at the same
12 time, we have a problem, and if it requires changes in the
13 certification process and who can be a substitute teacher
14 and the notion of emergency certification, then it’s going
15 to require either the Department changes its policy within
16 the certification office or we legislatively change it.
17 I mean, in other words, I understand when you say
18 you don’t have the capacity. I understand when you say
19 that it’s a local problem. I understand when you say that
20 we should come together. But ultimately, then, wouldn’t
21 the answer have to be to hear out what’s going on and then
22 for us -- I mean to legislatively then to deal with the
23 question of certification as it involves substitute
24 teachers because it’s very specific now who can be a
25 substitute and who can’t. So is that what you’re 15
1 suggesting we should do?
2 SECRETARY RIVERA: Well, I'd say we have to sit
3 down -- so, first, today, the conversations had and the
4 testimony is going to provide us great anecdotal
5 information and feedback. I would also caution that you
6 never want to take a swift movement or a change or paint
7 with a broad brush so to speak because there are a number
8 -- so, first, I'll take a step back and explain that there
9 are less than 10 people in the queue to become substitutes
10 across the full Commonwealth who are waiting for
11 certification processing, and that's primarily a result of
12 a legal flag, moral flag of the like. So certification
13 does provide much-needed due diligence to ensure the right
14 individuals are going into our schools, into our buildings.
15 Secondly, there are a number of other
16 initiatives, a number of other -- much of what you'll hear
17 today, probably some relief that can be provided to
18 districts in terms of the process and the terms of who can
19 become a substitute and who can't by law. We can
20 definitely engage in those conversations. But I would say
21 it's best we do it together at the table to ensure we don't
22 make our schools more vulnerable in the process of making
23 it easier to become a substitute.
24 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Mr.
25 Chairman, I had just one final question. I am presuming 16
1 then that, unlike some other areas, the Department is
2 reaching out and saying this is one that we can do
3 together?
4 SECRETARY RIVERA: I don’t know — absolutely.
5 The answer to that is yes, and I don’t know what those
6 other areas in which we have not shared -
7 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Well —
8 SECRETARY RIVERA: -- we can work together on.
9 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: — we could
10 humbly suggest a number, including the recent changes in
11 the exams. But that’s not the point of the hearing today.
12 SECRETARY RIVERA: Okay.
13 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: But thank
14 you.
15 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
16 Longietti.
17 I’m sorry. Excuse me, Representative. Chairman
18 Roebuck.
19 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
20 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: So sorry.
21 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: I certainly
22 am well aware of the problem of substitute teachers had a
23 devastating impact upon my school district, City of
24 Philadelphia, and it seems to me the problem in part is
25 that we already have a problem of understaffing, which has 17
1 been a rollover from previous years in reduction education
2 spending. But now we also have the problem of not even
3 being able to replace those teachers who are already
4 understaffed when they're not there.
5 So the problem to me is somewhat difficult to get
6 a handle on. I'm not certain to what degree the Department
7 of Education actually has any kind of direct guidance or
8 supervision over local school districts. We're starting to
9 say that the less that that happens, the better off we are.
10 I'm not certain I agree with that.
11 But the result is that in my district the
12 district has chosen to adopt a new procedure for hiring
13 substitutes. They've outsourced the process. And
14 therefore, although they work -- that outsourced agency was
15 responsible for producing substitutes, they've produced
16 only 15 percent of the number of substitutes which they
17 were supposed to do.
18 Now, I'm not certain where that leaves us. I
19 don't know whether there's any sort of remedy and certainly
20 no remedy in terms of law and no remedy in terms of
21 process. We don't even elect our own a school board in
22 Philadelphia, as you know. And it's largely controlled by
23 the State. So I don't know if I look to you as the
24 representative of State Government to actually aggressively
25 pursue the problem here and maybe set out some remedies. 18
1 Or how do we resolve this?
2 SECRETARY RIVERA: So, first, you are absolutely
3 right when, for a district like Philadelphia or any
4 district for that matter that starts with a significant
5 number of vacancies, you are starting below the bar. I
6 mean, you figure if you have 10 vacancies, if you have 100
7 vacancies, your first 10 or 100 substitutes are going to go
8 into filling those vacant positions.
9 So then when you take that and you add teachers
10 who may be out on long-term illness or long-term need and
11 short-term illness, the number then just becomes -- the
12 number is just exacerbated by that condition. So you’re
13 correct. First, in having vacancies and not filling
14 vacancies you’re creating a greater need, and you’ve
15 created a hole that makes it much harder to fill.
16 Secondly, what w e ’ve been doing with Philadelphia
17 and many other school districts across the Commonwealth,
18 whenever they’re looking to hire, for example, and they
19 have someone that they want to work through or process
20 through the certification process, we work individually
21 with those districts to provide the technical support
22 needed to not wait for, for example, just the processing
23 time or mail time around the process.
24 So we’ve been working very, very hard with school
25 districts across the Commonwealth, first, to be responsive 19
1 to their needs around certification and placement; second,
2 to work with them around ensuring that candidates know
3 quickly the hiring needs, whether it’s the background
4 checks, for example, and the needs for credentialing; and
5 lastly, by making ourselves available to expedite the
6 process whenever and wherever possible. So we are working
7 really hard with Philadelphia and districts like
8 Philadelphia, districts of need like Philadelphia to help
9 work through the process as quickly as possible.
10 I think the other aspect of it is there are a
11 number of school districts across the Commonwealth who
12 outsourced their substitute service system, the provider,
13 and some who maintain it in-house, and it’s a matter of
14 setting expectations and ensuring that the conditions in
15 which you’re hiring meet the market need and meet the
16 community need.
17 So I ’m hoping, as we look closely and continue to
18 support a district like Philadelphia as they better
19 acclimate themselves to a new process, as they look to
20 really create conditions in which folks want to come into
21 that system, we see the numbers improve. But it’s one of
22 the districts where the numbers remain consistently low.
23 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: I would hope
24 that, too, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. And I
25 guess the bottom line for me is if indeed a district 20
1 chooses to outsource and they enter into a contractual
2 relationship and that contract is not fulfilled, is the
3 only option then to, what? I mean, especially in
4 Philadelphia where in fact the State is the controlling
5 factor, is it the State’s obligation to enforce the
6 contract?
7 SECRETARY RIVERA: Well, interestingly enough, I
8 mean, although they had an appointed SRC, School Reform
9 Commission, it is the responsibility of the SRC in
10 Philadelphia and in school boards, of course, across the
11 Commonwealth to give direction to the Superintendent to
12 manage and maintain those contracts.
13 So, ultimately, it is the responsibility of the
14 School Reform Commission and the administration to hold the
15 contractor available. And I think what I ’ve read and the
16 discussions I’ve had, they’ve put expectations in writing
17 as part of the contract, and they’ve put penalty and -
18 they put both the carrot and the stick, penalty and reward,
19 for meeting those expectations. So that was a smart move.
20 And now it’s incumbent upon them locally to hold that
21 manager, that provider accountable.
22 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Okay. Thank
23 you.
24 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
25 Longietti. 21
1 REPRESENTATIVE LONGIETTI: Thank you,
2 Mr. Secretary, for being here today and your testimony.
3 Just curious, what is your view of more readily
4 recognizing out-of-state certificates when it comes to
5 substitutes?
6 SECRETARY RIVERA: Great question. That's
7 actually something that we're looking at right now, looking
8 at the credentialing of other States and trying to create a
9 much more robust crosswalk from other States to ours. So
10 that is something that we're looking at and working on.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LONGIETTI: I appreciate that
12 and -
13 SECRETARY RIVERA: And they can be subs.
14 However, just overall credentialing, yes, we're looking at
15 that.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LONGIETTI: Appreciate that very
17 much. I come from a border community, and I think some of
18 these problems are in border communities. And thank you.
19 SECRETARY RIVERA: Absolutely.
20 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
21 Tallman.
22 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
23 and thank you, Secretary, for being here [inaudible]
24 Chairman Saylor mentioned [inaudible] Philadelphia
25 [inaudible] year to year [inaudible] this chart that you 22
1 provided [inaudible]. There’s a difference there between
2 Allegheny County, so I would like to know what happens
3 since that’s our two large metro areas. But let me ask
4 this question. The 06 certification, what’s the time frame
5 for that to happen? So if I submit [inaudible] teach math
6 and science -- don’t ask me to. Where’s [inaudible]?
7 Anyway, but I should be able to. I should be
8 able to do it now, provided I have my background check.
9 [inaudible] frustrating [inaudible] somebody else
10 [inaudible] from Philadelphia. He should be able to teach
11 writing.
12 So my question is how fast does that happen when
13 a school district [inaudible] and why do we make it so
14 [inaudible] Philadelphia because there’s a lot of tech
15 companies in Philadelphia. They have all kinds of
16 bachelor’s degrees there. [inaudible] what’s the time
17 frame when school districts [inaudible] apply for it and
18 then how many do we actually [inaudible]? How many 06
19 certifications [inaudible]?
20 SECRETARY RIVERA: So Terry Barnaby did a great
21 job preparing my cheat sheet here, if I may, which we have
22 the answer to many of the questions. What I ’m going to ask
23 her, and I think this is something to -- I want her to
24 answer this question only because it highlights the work of
25 her department over the past few months, which we are 23
1 extremely proud of.
2 MS. BARNABY: The only thing that you have to
3 have to be a substitute in the circumstances that you’re
4 describing is a bachelor’s degree. For an 06 permit,
5 you’re required to have a bachelor’s degree. So certainly
6 an engineering person is qualified to substitute.
7 The process is that they go into the TIMS, which
8 is the Teacher Information Management System, online
9 system. They put in their information. Philly goes in and
10 says, yes, we want this person to substitute and the permit
11 is automatically given, provided there’s no, what the
12 Secretary referred to as the good moral character issue
13 where there’s some investigation about a previous crime or
14 child abuse or some other things.
15 But assuming that everything is okay, that the
16 questions were answered in the positive sense, then that
17 person is automatically approved. Emergency permits go to
18 the front of the queue of all applications, and the day-to-
19 day sub permits are automatically approved based on having
20 met the very minimal qualifications that are required. We
21 do pull one out of every 100 permits just to make sure that
22 the system is catching people with good moral character
23 issues or who are noncitizens because we have to verify
24 that they’re on the appropriate paper to be subbing in the
25 schools due to State law. 24
1 So other than that there is no wait. I checked
2 on it Friday afternoon, as the Secretary said, because we
3 knew we were coming here this morning. We had only four
4 permits that were in the queue that had not been approved,
5 and they were all because of a good moral character issue.
6 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: [inaudible].
7 SECRETARY RIVERA: Total number of 06.
8 MS. BARNABY: 06. I don't think —
9 SECRETARY RIVERA: I don't think you gave me that
10 on my cheat sheet, Terry. We can get that back to you.
11 MS. BARNABY: We can provide that, but it's
12 anybody who applied and then the district wanted them.
13 Sometimes people put them in and the district doesn't go in
14 and validate that they want that person.
15 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you.
16 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
17 McCarter.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you,
19 Mr. Chairman. And again, thank you, Mr. Secretary, for
20 being here this morning.
21 One of the areas that, again, I've heard many
22 times from constituents and from former colleagues in
23 teaching is the problem dealing with retirees not being
24 able to substitute because of the impact that would come
25 from loss of PSERS, their pension. 25
1 I ’d like to know your view as to -- and given the
2 circumstances of what’s taking place right now and across
3 the State in especially certain locations, whether in fact
4 it would be prudent to allow a waiver up to a certain
5 number of days that former teachers, who have retired,
6 could be able to go back into the classroom as substitutes,
7 so 90 days a year or 50 days or whatever the case may be.
8 But I ’m curious as to your reaction to that.
9 SECRETARY RIVERA: Selfishly, from an
10 instructional standpoint and equality standpoint, I would
11 love to have the conversation. I understand there are
12 other conditions and other perspectives that have to become
13 part of the conversation, but strictly from a teaching and
14 learning perspective and from the need perspective, it’s a
15 great conversation for us to have.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: It is a very
17 significant pool of people -
18 SECRETARY RIVERA: It is.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: -- that would be there
20 to be able to help in this situation across the
21 Commonwealth. So I ’d ask you to look at that very
22 carefully.
23 SECRETARY RIVERA: Absolutely.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you.
25 SECRETARY RIVERA: Absolutely. Thank you. 26
1 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
2 Hill.
3 REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Good morning.
4 SECRETARY RIVERA: Good morning.
5 REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you very much for
6 being here today [inaudible] very loud voice.
7 We are a border community in my district, and I
8 don’t hear about these issues occurring [inaudible]. Are
9 other States having the same issues [inaudible], and if
10 they are, what programs have they put in place to
11 adequately address the shortage [inaudible]? And what have
12 we learned from those efforts?
13 SECRETARY RIVERA: So in doing our research,
14 w e ’ve learned that a number of States are running into very
15 similar problems recruiting, retaining substitutes. And as
16 a matter of fact, on the way here, I don’t want to scare
17 everyone but I ’ll share that our Deputy of Higher Ed was
18 sharing that there’s a State that instituted a 1 cent
19 additional tax levy strictly for educator salaries, to
20 increase the salaries because they realized they were
21 exporting a large number of teachers because of pay and
22 because of conditions.
23 So there are other States who have looked to
24 address this issue by improving conditions, by increasing
25 salary, by instituting -- in some cases they look at 27
1 outsourcing as a way to have another institution, but that
2 doesn't always work, as we're seeing now. So everything
3 and anything that -- both what we've done in any business
4 model of support you can almost identify as one of the
5 strategies used in States across the country.
6 What we did notice, though, that especially this
7 year, and we have seen the growing number of need,
8 substitute service or the need for substitutes has really
9 hit a critical mass this year across the country.
10 REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Having served as
11 [inaudible] that what we're seeing in [inaudible]?
12 SECRETARY RIVERA: It's one of the issues. It's
13 why some school districts have opted to look at -- add
14 outsourcing. It's one of the conditions that's taken into
15 account, absolutely.
16 And, first, for the changing conditions around
17 substitutes but we're also realizing why some of -
18 historically, individuals who may have been subs are going
19 into other industry areas such as health care, especially
20 as we look at what we've noticed in some of our neediest
21 communities are going into the health care system for very
22 similar type jobs because there they are eligible for
23 health care much more quickly. So it's on both sides of
24 the coin.
25 REPRESENTATIVE HILL: My understanding was that 28
1 once a substitute [inaudible]?
2 SECRETARY RIVERA: For long-term, yes. For long
3 term substitutes, by law, yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you.
5 SECRETARY RIVERA: Thank you.
6 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
7 O ’Neill.
8 REPRESENTATIVE O ’NEILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 And thank you, Secretary, for being here.
10 I just have a quick comment based on
11 Representative McCarter’s questions about retired teachers.
12 When we were writing the legislation that we ran through
13 the House, we were informed by PSERS and the House
14 representative to PSERS that PSERS is looking at maybe
15 changing their guidelines and laws when it comes to retired
16 teachers and substituting and amount of days and hours and
17 that sort of thing. So they’re looking at that as well.
18 Thank you.
19 SECRETARY RIVERA: And one of the things I ’ve
20 learned when the administration and both chambers, when
21 everyone’s on the same page, w e ’ve been able to do some
22 pretty significant things that make some significant
23 changes, so I look forward to having a conversation on
24 that, help it along.
25 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative 29
1 Patty Kim.
2 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Thank you, Secretary.
3 I ’m surprised that w e ’re not really taking
4 advantage of the technology that we have. I think there’s
5 no quick fix but maybe in the meantime we could have some
6 kind of -- where instruction is delivered via computer, I
7 mean cyber schools do it all the time, and so instead of
8 having a certified substitute teacher, that we have
9 basically a facilitator to go from subject to subject and
10 have the kids receive instruction over the computer.
11 I mean, I don’t know what programs. All I know
12 is Khan Academy, you know, things where there’s actually a
13 certified teacher teaching on the computer and then a
14 facilitator goes from subject to subject. Are other
15 schools doing that, and is that something you’d be open to?
16 SECRETARY RIVERA: So, absolutely. I think it’s
17 a good conversation to have. There are school districts
18 that are engaging in that cyber learning option as one of
19 the alternatives. First, of course, you have to have a
20 pretty aggressive or robust infrastructure in place to be
21 able to support it. I mean there’s a lot of front-end
22 programmatic needs and structural needs that are needed,
23 but we do see it happening across the Commonwealth.
24 Secondly, you know, there are a number of other
25 areas of concern you have to be very mindful of. So one, 30
1 for example, would be special education students and
2 ensuring that they receive free and appropriate education.
3 So you have to have a certified individual there. The
4 other would be access to that technology.
5 Even when we're looking at cyber learning
6 options, one of the biggest areas of discussion, especially
7 for rural and many of our urban schools and school
8 districts, is just having the needed resources to build the
9 support infrastructure around it.
10 But there are many school districts that are
11 utilizing that type of technology, whether it's by
12 collapsing classes and using technology to provide -- or
13 letting students go to a library, for example, and having
14 modules available to them there. But to ensure that it's
15 done equitably, there's a lot of front-end work that we
16 would have to engage in.
17 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Are there any
18 other questions for the Secretary?
19 Chair?
20 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: I have just a
21 few before we go to the next panel. And I have some more
22 general questions in terms of the overall landscape in
23 regards to substitute teachers. I know you said there
24 isn't a lot of information compiled, but do you have a
25 sense of how many substitute teachers we have across the 31
1 Commonwealth overall?
2 SECRETARY RIVERA: No. When we looked at that,
3 because it’s locally driven and many -- so it’s very
4 interesting because there are a number of school districts
5 that outsource -
6 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Right.
7 SECRETARY RIVERA: -- that system, so I can’t
8 even look at one school district and identify the number of
9 subs they use on a daily basis because they share subs
10 amongst districts. So we were trying to get a nice picture
11 to -
12 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Right.
13 SECRETARY RIVERA: -- create as much information
14 as possible, and it was not very clean.
15 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Sure.
16 MS. BARNABY: If you see in the testimony about
17 the locally issued permits, we don’t have the data on that.
18 So particularly where there are teachers in a district that
19 have been laid off or for some reason aren’t working, the
20 local school district can issue a locally issued permit,
21 and that data doesn’t come in to the Department. So that’s
22 one of the reasons that we -- we could tell you how many 06
23 permits have been issued, but we can’t give you the numbers
24 of the locally issued permits.
25 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Okay. Do we 32
1 have any data on the absences of regular teachers in
2 districts, which would begin to tell us how many
3 substitutes we needed?
4 SECRETARY RIVERA: That information does exist at
5 the IUs. We could probably pull a good accounting. It may
6 not be exact but we could work on some of that data.
7 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Yes. I mean
8 it would be interesting for a number of reasons. One, I
9 would guess as a Superintendent of a school -- I don’t know
10 this, and if you can answer this, that’s fine -- but you
11 would expect a certain number of absences, and so you would
12 plan for a certain number of substitutes. And I ’m just
13 curious what that ratio is. How many substitutes should we
14 have compared to the total teachers in a district?
15 Your data, I think, compares number of teachers
16 per sub in the -- you have 2013-2014 data, which
17 essentially does that. But what I don’t know is where that
18 begins to become a problem. So I don’t know if -- would
19 you know what would be a good number to have there?
20 SECRETARY RIVERA: I think when we were
21 discussing this, I think the best practice that they put
22 out there is almost one to five.
23 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: One in five?
24 SECRETARY RIVERA: One to five, yes.
25 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Okay. 33
1 SECRETARY RIVERA: So that's kind of considered,
2 if you had to pull the formula, as to what a best practice
3 would be, that's the number you'd probably use.
4 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Yes. Okay.
5 I'd like to understand just a little bit more
6 about who your typical substitute would be in districts.
7 If you have one in five, does each district generally hire
8 full-time substitutes that are then moving from classroom
9 to classroom to fill a need? Or what would be the typical
10 substitute teacher?
11 SECRETARY RIVERA: Typically, what would happen
12 is the school district would identify a vacancy, whether
13 it's a short-term vacancy for a daily illness, for example,
14 or long-term vacancy for a longer-term illness, or even a
15 traditional vacancy, so you didn't fill the position per
16 se. And in that case it may vary. So many of the
17 individuals whose substitute service may be their sole
18 means of employment, for example, they may really look at
19 -- and having been a Superintendent, one of the first
20 questions they may -- and even as a Principal -- they ask
21 is this going to be short term or long term?
22 So some of the more experienced substitutes that
23 may use that as their primary employment would look to move
24 towards a longer-term sub for other reasons, as explained
25 earlier. Typically, they have to have a bachelor's degree 34
1 but I ’ve seen everything from firemen as substitutes who
2 have those three- to four-day shifts to folks who are
3 unemployed, from industry, others who might be retired from
4 another industry to come in. So it really varies in terms
5 of the workforce.
6 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: So there would
7 be some substitutes who really are looking for a full-time
8 position and they’re doing this until that becomes
9 available, is it right? But then others who may only want
10 part-time work -
11 SECRETARY RIVERA: Yes, it varies.
12 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: — who
13 available on an on-call basis?
14 SECRETARY RIVERA: It varies.
15 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Any sense of
16 the percentage?
17 SECRETARY RIVERA: I don’t know. I ’ve never
18 asked trend data on that, but I ’ll ask. I don’t know if it
19 exists.
20 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: So, again, I ’m
21 not sure yet in my mind at least how strong or how much of
22 a problem this is across the district. We see some data
23 here. But it clearly seems to be a growing problem.
24 I’m also hearing -- and I just want to do a
25 little aside to explore whether this is related to our 35
1 teacher availability in general, all teachers. At least
2 for a number of years up until recently I was under the
3 impression that we had more teachers graduating from our
4 colleges than there were spaces available. And I ’m hearing
5 now that may be changing and that it’s now hard to find
6 teachers for available spaces. And I ’m wondering whether
7 these two are just simply the same problem in a little
8 different way, in different areas. Do you think there’s a
9 relation between the two, and how do you view our current
10 teacher pool compared to available positions?
11 SECRETARY RIVERA: So it’s never as simple as
12 that, as the question, but what I can share with you, we
13 continue to see a decrease overall in the number of
14 students graduating from four-year institutions. We
15 continue to see a significant number of students graduating
16 from teachers’ colleges in general.
17 I can share, based on the trend analysis that we
18 pulled out most recent, which I think when you’re looking
19 at it, you’re looking at 2013 being the most current data.
20 We still do export a significant percentage of students to
21 other States in the field of education.
22 But it’s not really just as simple as a teacher
23 being a teacher being a teacher. So, for example, for us
24 we still have some very high-need areas in the areas of
25 high-level maths and science, special education teachers. 36
1 So in those areas we continue to see a shortage in many
2 places. They continue to be hard-to-fill positions. And
3 then in some of our other areas, elementary or some of the
4 other areas, there is still a significant number of
5 candidates.
6 So depending on the need, the pool varies so to
7 speak. So we can definitely see probably some of the other
8 areas where there are many, many more certified
9 professionals out there, they wouldn't have as hard a time
10 meeting the needs for substitutes. But if I had to guess,
11 and just based on conversation, I'd say that the secondary
12 folks are really where we find the greatest need in filling
13 substitutes or filling vacant positions.
14 And I will share with you if you wanted to just
15 get a quick sampling of how significant this conversation
16 is, just as we were saying hello to colleagues walking in
17 today, you have a good sampling of school districts here
18 today that are going to share their experience. I mean,
19 they pretty much represent the gamut of size, geographic
20 population, and need. So I think that's very telling just
21 how diverse a leadership group you have here today in terms
22 of big a need it is.
23 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: I hope that we
24 -- in all of the discussion that we have here in Harrisburg
25 in regards to education and how we fund education, how the 37
1 dollars are allocated, pensions, whatever it may be, I hope
2 we never lose sight of the fact of the importance of
3 teachers in our classroom and the importance of quality
4 teachers. So in terms of who is choosing to go into the
5 field of education, we hope they are some of our best and
6 brightest. And so whatever the discussion occurs here, I
7 think that’s always important. So I was just interested in
8 understanding a little more what trends w e ’re seeing there.
9 SECRETARY RIVERA: Yes.
10 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Just two other
11 quick comments, Representative McCarter brought up an issue
12 that I think it is a good one to look at. I ’ve been
13 hearing that from some of the Superintendents in my area
14 who see this pool of really, really well-qualified people
15 who don’t want a full-time job anymore but may be willing
16 to help out in a classroom, and not only help as a
17 substitute but even really serve as a mentor to a new
18 teacher. So it could really be -- or as an aide in a
19 classroom when needed. So it could be a way to provide
20 some additional resources to schools without a lot of
21 additional cost because, of course, you don’t have the
22 costs and the benefits with it in all.
23 And I don’t know how you get by the whole double
24 dipping thing. That is sort of the counterargument to
25 that, but I think that’s worth looking at. 38
1 Another idea that w e ’ll be hearing about later in
2 testimony today goes to the type 06 emergency permits,
3 which I think is what you had talked about earlier. The
4 current requirement is for a bachelor’s, as you had stated.
5 Some States will allow someone who has maybe earned an
6 associate’s or equivalent number of credits, students still
7 in college to serve as a substitute teacher as well. So it
8 provides good experience for them. They’re essentially a
9 student teacher, but also fills a need for the districts,
10 particularly if w e ’re having trouble finding people. And
11 that idea had come up with a group of Superintendents with
12 Millersville, which is in the district that I represent,
13 and they would really like that as well. So I ’m just
14 wondering if you would support that approach.
15 SECRETARY RIVERA: Absolutely. That’s a
16 conversation we’ve been having at the Department as well,
17 just the benefit of doing it, but ensuring that if you’re
18 going to expose especially students in the college of ed,
19 for example, who are about to graduate in allowing them to
20 expose themselves to managing their own classrooms while at
21 the same time making sure we put supports in place to
22 ensure it’s a good experience because what we don’t want to
23 do is turn them off the teaching at the same time.
24 But I think this is one of the issues that’s
25 probably most exciting to us because it something we can 39
1 get some traction around. And in the Department of Ed
2 there's so much we're working with, and any opportunity to
3 accomplish something together is something that we'll jump
4 in with both feet. So absolutely, absolutely.
5 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you.
6 Just one final, this was in regards to an issue that
7 Representative Roebuck had brought up in the Philadelphia
8 School District. We had heard as well about the lack of
9 substitutes with the new contract compared to the number of
10 vacancies, and I think we also need to look at the
11 vacancies.
12 It seems at least that the first statistics that
13 we looked at -- and I just want to ask if you'd heard
14 anything about this -- that the vacancies had really spiked
15 up. There were a lot of teachers not showing up for class.
16 Whether or not that's related to the contract, I'm not
17 sure, dissatisfaction with that contract, but to the degree
18 of in the first week I think there were about -- if my
19 information is correct -- 1,000 vacancies out of 8,000
20 teachers. Is that correct?
21 SECRETARY RIVERA: So that's what I read as well.
22 I've not asked the school district to verify, to validate
23 that number. But the Representative is right. The
24 Chairman is right. Whenever you start -- even if it's 100
25 vacancies in a district as large as Philadelphia, that's 40
1 100-position hole that you have to fill before you even get
2 to status quo, right? And so it is significant, and it’s
3 something that is absolutely worth the conversation in
4 addressing.
5 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Yes. And
6 again, I don’t know all the facts there. I just hope that
7 in all cases teachers are keeping the best interests of
8 students in mind.
9 So thank you, Secretary, for being here.
10 SECRETARY RIVERA: Thank you.
11 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: And, let’s
12 see, with that, w e ’ll ask our next panel to come to the
13 table at the front. The clock behind us has that it’s
14 exactly on time, but I think it’s been stuck there, so we
15 have apparently a lot of time. And I don’t know that this
16 one is right either but -
17 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: It’s not.
18 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: — thank you
19 to each of you for being here. Maybe if you would start by
20 each introducing yourself to the panel and then proceed
21 with your testimony in the order that you’d prefer.
22 DR. ESHBACH: I ’m Eric Eshbach. I ’m
23 Superintendent of the Northern York County School District
24 and Chair of the Pennsylvania Association of School
25 Administrators Legislative Committee. 41
1 DR. LEICHLITER: I ’m Mike Leichliter. I ’m the
2 Superintendent of Schools for Penn Manor School District in
3 Lancaster County, one of the districts that Senator Smucker
4 represents.
5 MR. BERNHARD: Good morning. My name is Rob
6 Bernhard. I ’m Director of Human Resources for the School
7 District of the City of York.
8 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you.
9 And you may proceed.
10 DR. ESHBACH: Sure. Thank you, Chairman Smucker,
11 Chairman Dinniman, Chairman Saylor, and Chairman Roebuck,
12 Members of the Senate and House Education Committees, for
13 providing the Pennsylvania Association of School
14 Administrators the opportunity to share our perspective on
15 the challenges that face schools as they struggle to
16 identify and employ sufficient numbers of substitute
17 teachers.
18 Much of our testimony has been covered in what
19 we’ve talked about this morning already with Secretary
20 Rivera, so I ’m going to move through rather quickly. And
21 while there are issues with substitute everything, whether
22 it be substitute aides or substitute bus drivers or, in my
23 case, the biggest concern is substitute school nurses,
24 right now, today, w e ’re going to focus on substitute
25 classroom teachers. 42
1 And as you heard, there are basically two
2 different kinds. There's the day-to-day substitute
3 teacher, which the minimal requirements for that are the
4 guest teacher type programs where you have a bachelor's
5 degree and go through some guest teacher training; and we
6 also have long-term subs, which fill in for a longer period
7 of time during times of absence for things such as a
8 teacher's maternity leave or a serious illness or a
9 sabbatical.
10 To answer one of the questions, Senator Smucker,
11 that you brought up, in my experience a majority of the
12 people that are substitute teaching want to be full-time
13 teachers. Twenty years ago, I was an Assistant Principal
14 calling substitutes before they had the automated systems,
15 and back then, we had more people that were maybe stay-at-
16 home moms or had part-time jobs and were willing to do
17 this. We're not seeing that as much.
18 Please remember that from a Superintendent's
19 perspective and a Principal's perspective, what we would
20 like to see in a substitute teacher is continuity of our
21 program as opposed to just what I will call the bouncer in
22 the classroom. We would love to be able to maintain that,
23 when a teacher is out, that the curriculum and the
24 instruction that would have normally gone on on that day
25 would continue to go on. 43
1 So when a school is unable to find a substitute
2 teacher to cover a classroom, the building principal may
3 need to temporarily cancel instruction in special subjects
4 like music, art, or phys ed so that the teachers of those
5 subjects instead cover for the regular classroom teacher
6 who is absent.
7 This means students throughout the school may not
8 receive that instruction in those subjects during that day
9 or that week. In middle school and high schools, other
10 teachers may need to use their prep time to cover a class
11 instead of preparing instructional activities for their own
12 students, and in some instances, this is a violation of the
13 collective bargaining agreement and oftentimes requires a
14 school district to pay its teachers extra when planning
15 time is missed.
16 In some extreme cases, teachers may need to
17 double up their students with another class or send
18 students to a study hall. I think you would agree that in
19 all of these examples the quality of instruction is
20 impacted.
21 Each of us remember from our own school
22 experience how difficult a job it is for a substitute
23 teacher to walk into a classroom, see students for the
24 first time, and strive to have students make productive use
25 of their time together. And let me say publicly, if you 44
1 were a substitute teacher in Dover High School in the early
2 ’80s, I want to apologize for the way that I behaved with
3 my substitute teachers.
4 While attracting qualified individuals to serve
5 in these on-call day-to-day temporary jobs without benefits
6 has always been a challenge. There’s a combination of the
7 improving employment picture in most other sectors of the
8 economy, combined with a dramatic reduction in the number
9 of students graduating from college with teaching
10 certificates that has greatly reduced the number of
11 qualified individuals who accept these jobs.
12 And we have provided some information you’ve
13 already touched upon as far as the number of certificates.
14 We present a bar graph there of recent college graduates
15 with teaching certificates, and just over the past three
16 years you can see how dramatically that has decreased from
17 16,361 in the year 2012-2013 to 6,215 in the year 2014
18 2015.
19 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Can I stop you
20 for just a second?
21 DR. ESHBACH: Absolutely.
22 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: I don’t think
23 w e ’ve received that information. At least I don’t -- oh,
24 it’s on the -
25 DR. ESHBACH: It would be on page 2 of my 45
1 testimony.
2 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Okay. Thank
3 you very much.
4 DR. ESHBACH: Sure. The pool of teachers who are
5 searching for employment has dried up following several
6 years where districts across the State furloughed teachers
7 and abolished vacant positions. Our organization, as well
8 as the Business Officials organization provided a June 2015
9 report on school district budgets based on survey responses
10 from 69 percent of school districts across the State. And
11 that found that 41 percent of the school districts planned
12 to reduce staff in the current school year. Twenty-five
13 percent of those planned to furlough staff and 89 percent
14 planned to abolish vacant positions.
15 And while the school employment picture for
16 teachers has slightly improved in some districts, others
17 continue to cut staff, creating an employment picture that
18 is driving many of our best and brightest high school
19 graduates who have an interest in pursuing a career in
20 education to pursue other career options.
21 Based on our review of school district practices
22 across the State, it appears that up to half have
23 contracted with a private contractor to provide day-to-day
24 substitute coverage. Another 10 to 20 percent of school
25 districts are participating in a substitute service 46
1 consortium operated through their intermediate unit or in
2 partnership with other school districts. And the balance
3 directly hire and employ their own day-to-day substitutes.
4 Daily base compensation for day-to-day
5 substitutes can range anywhere from $75 per day up to $110
6 per day, depending upon the labor market. Many districts
7 offer longevity supplements that increase the daily rate
8 retroactive to their start date. And w e ’ve also noted
9 several districts located within the Philadelphia labor
10 market that provide an additional $10 for substitutes who
11 work on Monday or Friday. And I think, as Dr. Leichliter
12 would agree to, spring Mondays and Fridays are difficult to
13 find substitutes.
14 Recent change to criminal background checks,
15 child abuse clearance, and employment verifications make
16 quick, short-term placements difficult, if not impossible.
17 Depending on the time of the year, a one-month or two-month
18 lead time is required to obtain the necessary clearances
19 and employment verifications for candidates for any staff
20 position that has direct contact with students. And while
21 we don’t think that that’s a bad idea, it’s just a reality
22 that it does take time for those clearances to go through.
23 We do offer the following suggestions, and the
24 first was brought up. Currently retired teachers who
25 receive pension payments from PSERS will have their 47
1 payments cease and retirement account frozen should they
2 return to work for a public school entity unless they
3 return in a bona fide staffing emergency or if their
4 service is in an extracurricular position that is separate
5 from the established academic course structure.
6 We suggest expanding the exception for
7 extracurricular positions to permit PSERS annuitants, who
8 hold a valid teaching certificate, to work up to 95 days
9 each year as a day-to-day substitute without impacting the
10 pension benefit. They should not be entitled to earn
11 additional service credit, and no contributions or
12 deductions should be made to their account by the
13 annuitant, the school, or the Commonwealth.
14 The State Retirement Code currently permits State
15 agencies to hire retired State employees for up to 95 days
16 annually without impacting their State pension. Why
17 shouldn’t schools be permitted to do the same? This is a
18 pool of talent, a great pool of talent that is already
19 credentialed, they’re trained, they’re ready to go, and
20 they’re grossly underutilized.
21 When there was a huge surplus of aspiring
22 teachers seeking employment, the prohibition made sense.
23 Given the shortages districts are now experiencing, it no
24 longer makes sense. We believe that w e ’re in an emergency
25 situation. 48
1 A second suggestion would be to permit education
2 majors who have completed their student teaching
3 experience, as Senator Smucker brought up, and they've
4 completed that experience in a satisfactory manner to serve
5 as day-to-day substitutes even before they've graduated.
6 They already have their clearances. They already have
7 their background checks. They've already had a productive
8 and worthwhile and satisfactory classroom instructional
9 experience. We would happily use them.
10 And finally, exempt day-to-day substitutes who
11 work fewer than 400 hours in any given school year from
12 eligibility for PSERS during that year. This was the case
13 prior to the Act 120 of 2010. As you know, with the
14 employer contribution rate approaching 30 percent of
15 payroll, this additional cost adds nearly one-third to the
16 cost of substitutes, and the employee contribution rate
17 also reduces the take-home pay in an already low and
18 inconsistent paycheck.
19 By exempting this group from PSERS, districts
20 could increase their daily rate paid to substitutes without
21 increasing the cost to the district. And the substitute
22 would benefit by not having to contribute 7.5 percent or
23 more of their paycheck to PSERS.
24 And I would like to turn it over to
25 Dr. Leichliter. 49
1 DR. LEICHLITER: Thank you, Dr. Eshbach. And
2 thank you to Senator Smucker, Senator Dinniman,
3 Representative Saylor, Representative Roebuck for this
4 opportunity to speak on behalf of our district of one
5 experience we have with substitute teachers.
6 This is my 25th year as a public educator in
7 Pennsylvania. I started my career as a teacher in the
8 School District of the City of York and moved to Lancaster
9 County as a high school administrator, was a middle school
10 Principal, spent nine years as a building administrator.
11 And during my time as a teacher and a Principal, I can
12 count them probably one hand the number of times that I
13 experienced a day in which we had an uncovered teacher
14 classroom.
15 That’s changed dramatically in the last three
16 years for Penn Manor. We are now in a situation, according
17 to our human resources office, where in the 2013-2014
18 school year we had 116 classroom vacancies that were left
19 unfilled. Last school year, we had nearly 300, 286
20 unfilled vacancies. That’s a dramatic increase, a dramatic
21 increase for our district.
22 I am also very concerned with the quality of
23 instruction in the classroom that occurs when you don’t
24 have a substitute in the classroom. We are already
25 experiencing a trend higher than last year, and I do want 50
1 to say that the numbers over the last two years or total
2 number of absences have been about the same within the same
3 ballpark. But the number of substitutes available to fill
4 them has dropped dramatically.
5 Just last week, for example, Tuesday we had three
6 unfilled classrooms in our district, three on Wednesday,
7 and two on Thursday. And I point this out, as Dr. Eshbach
8 had said, normally mid-weeks are when we don’t have
9 problems. Mondays and Fridays are the main concerns, but
10 we are seeing that trend change dramatically.
11 Before I talk about one solution, I want to talk
12 about two other areas that really concern me. We talked
13 about instruction in the classroom, the fact that children
14 are receiving instruction that is not the same high-quality
15 when we have to piece together schedules. It has, number
16 one, an impact also on our Principals. I was a Principal.
17 When I first became a Principal, your main job was to
18 manage the building. We were not looking to Principals
19 nearly as much for instructional leadership, for improving
20 the quality of instruction in the classrooms. Their job
21 was to make sure classrooms were in order, students were
22 doing their job.
23 That’s changed dramatically, especially with No
24 Child Left Behind, with other State encouragements that
25 have really focused the attention on raising the level of 51
1 academic rigor. So our Principals are expected to be in
2 classrooms on a regular basis coaching teachers, improving
3 instruction.
4 In my written testimony, I give a detailed
5 account from one of my Principals, Dr. Jennifer Sugra,
6 who's the Principal of Martic Elementary, which is the
7 furthest-most elementary school in our district. In
8 Lancaster County, Penn Manor is fourth-largest student
9 population with 5,300 students, but we're the second-
10 largest geographically. We cover 110 square miles, a very
11 large area.
12 Martic is a very rural area. We range from rural
13 schools to suburban schools to an area that borders
14 Lancaster City. So we are quite diverse. I picked Martic
15 because it is a more rural area, an area harder to get to,
16 and the Principal gave me an account of what a day is like
17 for her when she does not have a substitute. We use
18 [inaudible] automated system to fill subs. We do use an
19 outsourcing company, SDS, to provide the substitutes, but
20 we're able to see, through this computer interface, the
21 number of absences.
22 So it's a very regular occurrence for her now to
23 do -- the last thing she does before she goes to bed is to
24 check the system to see what kind of coverage she has. The
25 first thing she gets up even before she's out of bed in the 52
1 morning is to check the app to see how many unfilled
2 vacancies. And she gives an account of going to bed with
3 one filled vacancy, waking up in the morning, finding that
4 there’s two unfilled vacancies in her classroom. And this
5 is a more regular occurrence. And then she spends the next
6 hour herself calling substitutes trying to find somebody to
7 come into the classroom, doing this while she’s traveling
8 to school, and then realizing she can’t cover it, thinking
9 how am I going to make this work to give students some kind
10 of a good education during the school day.
11 She will cancel classes with specialists, music,
12 and phys ed, art, to have those teachers help cover. She
13 herself will cancel meetings with parents, cancel meetings
14 with teachers, observations with teachers to cover the
15 class herself, taking her out of that instructional
16 leadership role. And by the end of the day, as I talk to
17 my Principals, they are just exhausted.
18 So beyond the impact it has on children and
19 teachers, it has a big impact on our Principals as well,
20 and that concerns me.
21 Another area that I want to touch upon before I
22 talk about one solution is the impact that w e ’ve seen in
23 some of the training mandates. Senator Smucker and I often
24 talk about the fact that public education in and of itself
25 is a mandate, but over the past few years, with additional 53
1 areas of impact for schools, Pennsylvania Common Core
2 implementation, additional training for Pennsylvania
3 [inaudible] an assessment system that w e ’ve added, other
4 areas, training for suicide and depression awareness, all
5 these other areas have forced us to go beyond the days that
6 we already have a lot of professional development, pull
7 teachers out of the classroom during the school day to
8 write curriculum. W e ’ve had to do a lot of curriculum
9 development and curriculum reevaluation and rewriting in
10 the last three years due to the implementation of
11 [inaudible] areas that I firmly believe in. They’re very
12 sound areas, areas that we needed to make improvements.
13 However, we are now increasing the number of days that we
14 are calling substitutes in order to pull teachers out of
15 the classroom to write curriculum.
16 So I would just ask that the distinguished
17 members of this panel consider that as we consider further
18 types of mandates for training for teachers for schools
19 because it does have an impact on the subs. W e ’re using
20 more subs for professional development.
21 I do want to focus on one area that has been
22 briefly touched upon as a potential solution. Millersville
23 University of Pennsylvania is within the Penn Manor School
24 District. We have a very long history together of working
25 together, and the idea of using education majors is 54
1 something that has great interest to me.
2 I was an education major myself 25 years ago at
3 Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania. A good friend
4 of mine who was from the State of New Jersey talked one
5 time about going home and substituting while he was at
6 home, which really intrigued me. It was something that we
7 couldn't do in Pennsylvania. And after talking to him, he
8 told me that if you were a junior, if you're an education
9 major, the key was that you could substitute in classrooms
10 with certain criteria.
11 And having Millersville University in our
12 backyard is something that really appeals to me to be able
13 to make use of college education majors. Again, certain
14 criteria, certain recommendations would have to be part of
15 that process, clearances of course, but we have a great
16 pool in Pennsylvania close to Penn Manor but also in public
17 and private universities across the State where this could
18 be a good solution to help put qualified people in our
19 classrooms and people who would have a definite motivation
20 to do well and succeed and would give them an opportunity
21 to be in the classroom on their own with more minimal
22 supervision than they would and would give them practice.
23 So I think it's an area that really deserves greater
24 attention and greater discussion as to a way to help solve
25 the problem. 55
1 In all districts, that wouldn’t be the magic
2 solution to stop the shortage we have, but it would
3 certainly help to supplement the problems w e ’re seeing in
4 our classrooms.
5 And I do also -- before I turn it over to our
6 colleague from the School District of the City of York, I
7 do want to comment on one other area that was brought up in
8 a question, and that is I mentioned at the beginning we do
9 use substitute teacher service. Our district did outsource
10 because of some concerns with the Affordable Care Act, as
11 well as the increasing pension costs. The time of our
12 shortage coincided with our transition, and it was an area
13 that was of great concern to me, so I reached out to some
14 of my colleagues across the county.
15 Our neighboring districts, Hempfield School
16 District, did not outsource. They still hire their own
17 substitutes, but my colleague in that district, now retired
18 Superintendent Dr. Becker, shared with me that they were
19 experiencing similar shortages. So it was not something in
20 Lancaster County that was directly related to outsourcing
21 but something that was related to the pool and various
22 other factors.
23 I would appreciate the Committee’s consideration
24 of some of these ideas, and I ’d be glad to be a resource as
25 we move forward. Thank you for this time. 56
1 MR. BERNHARD: Good morning. Thank you to
2 Representative Saylor, Senator Smucker, Senator Dinniman,
3 and the rest of the Committee for inviting me to come up
4 and speak with you this morning.
5 We at the School District of the City of York
6 have had challenges finding substitute teachers, like many
7 other areas out there. It was a fairly smooth process,
8 though, not that long ago, and we enjoyed fill rates, in
9 other words, the number of subs we could get in based on
10 need, we were hitting the 90th percentile. We really
11 enjoyed a very robust program when we had teacher absences.
12 Unfortunately, around 2012 budget cuts resulted
13 in a lot of furloughs, and, by the way, that wasn’t unlike
14 a lot of other districts not only in the State but also in
15 the country. Therefore, as a result, the School District
16 of the City of York was not the first choice that many
17 available subs had, if at all, primarily as a result that
18 there was not any kind of long-term goal for them to be
19 hired on by the district.
20 More specifically, lately, the School District of
21 the City of York had been identified as a moderately
22 financially distressed district. We were working with a
23 recovery plan. We did not have a teacher contract. There
24 was the possibility of our public schools going charter,
25 and then the looming idea of receivership as well. 57
1 Interestingly, not everybody understood or took the time to
2 understand what all of that meant. A lot of rumors, a lot
3 of misinformation was out there, and of course that
4 affected the students as well.
5 Positively and since then, there have been some
6 positive inroads. There is no receivership. The district
7 did ratify the teachers’ contract. There are no more
8 discussions on "charterization" currently. Our recovery
9 plan that we had been working with for the past several
10 years is going under revision as a result of our new Chief
11 Recovery Officer Dr. Carol Saylor, and the district is able
12 to bring back some programs that were scuttled in prior
13 years. There are also some new and exciting ways to
14 deliver curriculum through the distributed leadership
15 model, and frankly, the black cloud that was hanging over
16 our head for a number of years has lifted.
17 Adding or accepting substitute teacher positions
18 in an urban district, I believe, adds another layer of
19 trepidation if you will. There is the thought out there
20 that some of the more urban environments are rife with
21 behavior challenges, concerns for student safety, concerns
22 for staff safety. In the minds of many substitute
23 candidates, those concerns may not exist in the more
24 suburban environments.
25 York City, in response to that or partly in 58
1 response to that, took positive steps forward and
2 established a school police department to further ensure
3 the safety and helpful learning environment for everybody.
4 More generally, the education profession is
5 bounded by many laws and regulations, and some of these
6 enhancements and these regulations have attracted some and
7 dissuaded others. Although the spirit of the professional
8 Educator Discipline Act guidelines around mandatory
9 reporting, all of which are necessary, current reporting
10 procedures have the ability to bring an educator’s
11 professional integrity into question even in the event that
12 a situation they might be involved in is unfounded.
13 Recent high school graduates, I believe, are
14 thinking twice about whether the career as a professional
15 educator is what they want to do. Interestingly, w e ’ve
16 noticed a 32 percent decrease in the number of students
17 pursuing careers in education over the past eight years
18 alone. PDE also reported 62 percent fewer teaching
19 certificates that were issued between 2012 and ’13 and ’13-
20 ’14.
21 New educators graduating from college also appear
22 to be growing a little impatient after being tapped for sub
23 positions but maybe not being hired by that host district.
24 I think we alluded to it before, that some are opting for
25 private sector careers as a result of not finding their 59
1 niche in a district where they might be teaching.
2 Some educators are choosing to work part-time or
3 not at all as a result of family commitments and other
4 personal reasons. And, sadly, when this happens, the
5 people who suffer are our students. We spoke of it before,
6 that stability and consistency in the classroom is
7 paramount, and we should be considering that first and
8 foremost.
9 Districts across the region and perhaps across
10 the country with how they deal with substitute teachers, we
11 are also seeing that fewer districts are maintaining their
12 own sub pools, and they are relying on secondary staffing
13 agencies. We believe that to be as a result of some
14 budgetary, some liability, and certainly the Affordable
15 Care Act.
16 The difficulty is that there are few agencies out
17 there that specialize in providing professional educators
18 or subs. Those that do specialize in professional
19 educators have increased their market penetration in the
20 region, but as a result, have compromised their ability to
21 satisfy the increased number of openings based on other
22 reasons mentioned earlier. This isn’t to say that staffing
23 agencies aren’t being creative, as they have been. They’ve
24 been offering various salary and benefit incentives, along
25 with certification and training assistance as well. 60
1 We spoke earlier, or it was mentioned earlier
2 about rates, daily rates for substitutes. And in York
3 County, the Superintendents have long agreed to a standard
4 rate over the years, and everybody's honored that for many
5 years. Most recently, however, citing what we believe to
6 be some fairly extraordinary circumstances in the School
7 District of the City of York, we elected to increase our
8 rate rather substantially because our need, we believed,
9 was so great.
10 We spend a lot of time attending university job
11 fairs. We have had great success with both the
12 Millersville Job Fair, Penn State, as well as Slippery
13 Rock. We also spend a lot of time on social media,
14 Facebook, LinkedIn, and other education-specific websites
15 have been positive or had positive results for us, but
16 that’s not nearly enough at the end of the day.
17 Civic organizations have also been helpful to us.
18 We've had speakers at various civic organizations. We've
19 brought our teacher staffing agency into these specific
20 organizations to speak as well.
21 I suspect going forward that there is not a
22 simple answer to this, although I'm a strong supporter of
23 some modification to current PSERS guidelines, and school
24 districts like ours will consider or continue to consider
25 creative ways in which to close that gap. 61
1 I'd like to thank the Members of the Committee
2 again for inviting me, and I welcome any questions.
3 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I would just ask
4 the three gentlemen, because I know I'm going to get this
5 from some taxpayers out there, could you give us at some
6 point -- I don't think you probably have it with you today
7 -- somebody's going to suggest that, well, teachers are
8 taking more time off now than they did 5 years ago or 10
9 years ago. Could you provide us with information of what
10 your number of vacancies, total vacancies are over the last
11 5 or 10 years, whatever it may be at some point? I'd
12 appreciate it, just so the Committee Members have that
13 because I know we're going to get that question from some
14 people, that that's why there are so many vacancies. So
15 it'd be nice to have that for them.
16 I want to thank you, all three, for testifying
17 today. And it seems to me like there is a multitude, based
18 upon what you said and the Secretary said earlier, a number
19 of issues from the Affordable Care Act. Also, I know I
20 just came back from an education summit, Excellence in
21 Education, and I was getting thanked by a lot of
22 legislators from across the country for sending them some
23 quality teachers from our colleges. So I know we're
24 sending some good teachers elsewhere.
25 Earlier, Dr. Eshbach, you had suggested a number 62
1 of solutions. Do you feel that if that legislation was
2 passed, that that would totally or pretty much resolve the
3 issue? Again, not like w e ’d be sitting there perfect
4 but -
5 DR. ESHBACH: Your total resolution may be
6 elusive, but I will say that I ’ve been trying to get
7 substitute teachers for 25 years. It’s always been an
8 issue. It has exacerbated with the availability of
9 qualified people at this juncture. I think when you look
10 at -- other States do things like allow someone with a -
11 in Georgia they allow someone with a high school diploma or
12 a GED to substitute. In Maryland there are no
13 qualifications. A high school diploma could substitute.
14 Me personally, as a Superintendent, that’s not a
15 solution for me. I want high-quality people in there. I
16 think when you take a look at the PSERS issue and a great
17 resource of retired people that we could draw from and what
18 Dr. Leichliter talked about with college students, now
19 you’re getting people that understand students, understand
20 content, understand pedagogy, and can really keep that
21 continuity in the classroom. Is that going to totally
22 solve the problem? I don’t think so, but I think it’s
23 going to fill a huge gap.
24 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Okay. Chairman
25 Roebuck. 63
1 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
2 As I listened to the testimony -- and I thank
3 you, all of you, for giving your perspectives on this issue
4 -- one of the things that concerned me is that at least
5 some of the solutions seem largely focused upon the idea of
6 coverage of classrooms as opposed to quality of
7 instruction. And, for example, when you take an art or a
8 music or a phys ed teacher and put them in a math class,
9 I’m not certain that’s giving the students the instruction
10 they’re looking for, or vice versa for that matter, with
11 the math teacher doing well in the music room. In the same
12 way when you talk about using education majors to come into
13 classrooms, I wonder about the impact of that.
14 And what hits at the core is that we seem to
15 treat teaching as if it’s different than any other
16 profession in the world. No one would suggest that if you
17 couldn’t find a pilot to take the plane off that you put a
18 substitute pilot in there, and even get on the microphone
19 as he took off and said I ’ll do a good job. I don’t think
20 anyone would have faith in that.
21 It seems to me that the core of this is you’ve
22 got to maintain quality teachers, and you’ve got to solve
23 the substitute problem as part of that. You can’t do it
24 halfway. That’s just my general reaction to a couple of
25 the things that were said in the testimony. And I don’t 64
1 know if you disagree with that or if you have another
2 perspective.
3 DR. LEICHLITER: I think that's an excellent
4 point. And even when we had a full supply of substitutes,
5 it's something that we struggled with, especially at the
6 secondary level. If I have a physics teacher who was
7 absent, there aren't any physics teachers in our substitute
8 pool, and they haven't been. So that really is a
9 partnership with the teacher.
10 Our teachers, I think, work very hard. For
11 example, I have a daughter who's a senior at Penn Manor
12 High School. She was out and has an AP psychology class.
13 That teacher made use of the technology to really spend
14 time going through in her own video the lesson so that the
15 person who was in the classroom really was monitoring. So
16 we really ask our teachers -- and I think that's very
17 common.
18 It's a little easier to find qualified
19 substitutes at the elementary level where you have a
20 broader certification, but even that's changing with some
21 of the most recent certification changes to the law. So
22 teachers do struggle with that, even in a full supply.
23 DR. ESHBACH: And I can't agree with you more.
24 I'm currently looking for a full-time chemistry teacher at
25 the high school, and the number of teachers coming out of 65
1 the colleges this past year with chemistry certification is
2 very low. So it’s not just high-quality substitutes; it’s
3 high-quality substitutes that may become high-quality staff
4 members as well.
5 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
6 MR. BERNHARD: If I may just follow-up on that, I
7 certainly support my other two colleagues’ comments there
8 that, as I mentioned in my testimony, that this year w e ’ve
9 added back in a number of different classes that, as I
10 mentioned, were scuttled before, and we were looking for
11 Spanish teachers on a full-time basis. We continue to have
12 an opportunity to find some of the more specialty teaching
13 certificates like math and science as well, and finding
14 somebody with that sort of certification from a substitute
15 standpoint is near impossible.
16 HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
17 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Chairman
18 Dinniman.
19 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Thank you,
20 Chairman Saylor.
21 Let me ask this -
22 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Your mike.
23 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: That’s
24 always helpful, even with a loud voice.
25 The role of IUs, are IUs coordinating the 66
1 recruitment of substitute teachers in an area?
2 DR. ESHBACH: In certain areas they are, and I
3 can speak to our IU, Capital IU, in which they coordinate
4 the guest teacher program where they actually -- they help
5 to do the training and the vetting of those who don’t have
6 a teaching certificate to be able to give the school
7 district a list of substitutes for that guest teacher
8 program. So they’ve done that in some of our more rural
9 areas throughout the State. The IUs actually helped
10 coordinate the substitutes, and they work together as a
11 consortium with other school districts.
12 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Some of the
13 IUs have taken on an entrepreneurial approach. Have any of
14 them formed their own companies in terms of substitute
15 teaching?
16 DR. LEICHLITER: Not to my knowledge. And Flip
17 Steinour from our IU, IU 13, he is the HR Director. He’ll
18 be speaking shortly. But he has also helped us out, in
19 addition to the guest teacher program, by sponsoring a
20 substitute teacher fair that we all work together to
21 sponsor. So w e ’re trying. We have not had anyone who has
22 looked to some entrepreneurial avenues to supply greater
23 teachers.
24 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: The matter
25 of retired teachers is certainly one that is not only a 67
1 source, but it also takes care of the concerns that
2 Representative Roebuck has stated. What’s interesting is
3 not only State agencies but also in the State system of
4 higher education, if they need a professor, they can bring
5 that professor back for 95 days if it’s a shortage area.
6 They can certainly do it in terms of administrators. I ’ve
7 known a number of administrators who’ve been given extra
8 time to come back.
9 So, now, the question we have to ask is this
10 legislatively in law or is this is simply a regulation? In
11 other words, you have both PSERS and you also have the
12 school retirement system. Is it in both that we have this
13 95 -- that we do not allow a person to continue to teach,
14 or is it only in the school retirement system but in PSERS
15 it’s okay?
16 DR. ESHBACH: My understanding is the legislation
17 would be the only thing that could change this. So it
18 is -
19 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Is it in
20 both systems then?
21 DR. ESHBACH: I don’t know the answer to that.
22 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Because if
23 I understand the way you’re describing it is the school
24 district, during this period of time, the person -- you’re
25 not paying anything into the system, so the person isn’t 68
1 getting any benefit from this. If it's a long-term
2 substitute, I presume that their payment would stop during
3 that period of a long-term substitute, is that correct or
4 not correct? In other words, there's two questions. One
5 of course is what was the benefit? That at least is
6 solved. You don't have to worry about the Affordable Care
7 Act; you don't have to worry about anything else. The
8 person is covered by their benefits in the terms of the
9 retirement system.
10 The other question is will that person be
11 receiving a full pay or not a full pay during that period
12 of time? And I just don't know what happens when State
13 workers come in under that situation.
14 DR. ESHBACH: I'm not familiar with that either.
15 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Well,
16 that's something I suppose that we'll have to work out
17 because the concept is an excellent concept, especially in
18 terms of your long-term substitutes because there's a
19 difference for someone coming in for one day knowing
20 they're only there for one day. I mean there's not much
21 they can do on the curriculum except to teach what is in
22 that -- if the teacher has left that plan.
23 DR. ESHBACH: Right.
24 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: But it's
25 very different if I'm coming in for three or four months or 69
1 for a year or for a half-year. That’s a totally different
2 situation.
3 And when we had more people graduating in schools
4 of education, that was the first job many teachers got
5 actually. You were a long-term substitute, and then often,
6 the school district with hire you or another neighboring
7 district would hire you. But now that don’t have the
8 graduates to do that, it’s even more of the case why we
9 need to get into the PSERS question and try to resolve that
10 issue because that’s probably your best immediate source of
11 long-term substitutes.
12 And because you know what happens. Many teachers
13 don’t want -- when they retire, they sort of miss it and
14 they wouldn’t mind coming back for a period of time, but on
15 the other hand, they don’t want to do it permanently, and
16 especially if it was for a maternity leave or for a shorter
17 period of time.
18 So I think all of us certainly in the Senate and
19 the House need to look at the legislation that might be
20 necessary. You do save the money on benefits, and how we
21 deal with the question of pay I suppose is going to be
22 determined by what we currently do with our own people in
23 the system as it is. There might be a way that you give -
24 in other words, someone’s not going to come in if they’re
25 going to be paid less than what they’re getting in the 70
1 retirement, but it might be a way that you make up the
2 difference as a way that’s fair to the taxpayers and fair
3 to everyone.
4 Now, one other question is what happens during
5 testing since at least in my area w e ’re spending 26 days of
6 every year either preparing for the test or testing. Do
7 you actually have to bring in the substitutes when you have
8 a half-day there and everyone’s being tested?
9 DR. LEICHLITER: Yes, we have to bring in
10 substitutes, and I can tell you, I have seen some of our
11 teachers who were legitimately sick who would force
12 themselves to come in because they don’t want to miss that
13 testing portion. So it’s very difficult, so a lot of the
14 times if you have a substitute during actual testing,
15 you’ll have someone like the school counselor help out with
16 the administration, because if you haven’t been trained,
17 that presents other issues.
18 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Oh, that’s
19 correct. I was thinking how easy it might be not to have
20 substitutes because in some schools it’s done in a larger
21 room; it’s not done in the classroom necessarily. But the
22 point is everyone has to be trained and certified as being
23 trained so you can’t even resolve -- so that gives you a
24 whole other problem because how would you -- most
25 substitutes wouldn’t have been cleared, wouldn’t have taken 71
1 whatever the hours of training even for the tests.
2 DR. LEICHLITER: That's correct.
3 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: I didn't
4 even think of that as a problem. Thanks for helping us
5 understand that.
6 And the final question is -- the student teaching
7 is a great idea. We just have to figure out a way for
8 there to be some mentoring and helpfulness to that person
9 because it might be the first time he's there alone or
10 she's there alone. And I don't question the quality if the
11 person has gone through student teaching, but either the
12 Principal or the school or whatever we do in legislation
13 would have to provide something.
14 Perhaps Millersville or West Chester -- you know,
15 the university I represent, West Chester produces more
16 teachers than any other place in the Commonwealth right
17 now. But the question is does the faculty then have some
18 responsibility if that student goes in at least to talk
19 with the student after the experience to prepare him for
20 that experience? We think that's important.
21 DR. LEICHLITER: I think that's critical. And I
22 would recommend something similar to what we do with the
23 guest teacher program where there's a certain amount of
24 training that must take place before the person is
25 certified. 72
1 But for a college student, we talk about the
2 shortage. As a district that’s hiring fewer teachers, a
3 lot of our teachers would come to us through substituting.
4 And what I’m hearing anecdotally from a lot of our
5 substitutes is they can’t continue to be in a job that pays
6 $110 a day without benefits, so that’s why they get out of
7 the area. But for a college student who could make for a
8 half-day $55, having a son who’s in college right now,
9 that’s way more than he’s making as a college student
10 working within the university. I think this would be very
11 appealing to 20-year-olds who are looking to get experience
12 and earn a little extra money for college tuition.
13 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Well, the
14 nice thing about this is it’s not like Maryland where you
15 don’t need a degree at all, which is absurd, I mean, or to
16 have a GED. You have to have some preparation. It’s
17 professional development as someone who’s going into -
18 professional preparation. It’s just w e ’d have to work -
19 and I ’m sure we value your ideas on the way that the
20 university has some responsibility and works in unification
21 with the student.
22 This is like student teaching II except you’re in
23 there alone now, you know? And that’s good. That’s good.
24 You could even be part of the -- you could integrate that
25 into the total coursework. It’d be an exciting thing, that 73
1 you go through two student teaching experiences, maybe one
2 at nine weeks and one at six weeks if it’s a semester when
3 you’re in there alone. But there is some help that’s given
4 to you because I ’m sure there’s enough substitute work if
5 we work it out with the school district in the area
6 students in elementary or high school that we can
7 accomplish, especially in areas that have large populations
8 as Lancaster, Chester, York County. So we have to work on
9 that. Good idea.
10 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
11 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
12 Truitt.
13 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
14 and thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.
15 I happen to be an engineer, businessman, and a
16 free trade or free market kind of guy. And one of my best
17 friends is a teacher so I know what your gut reaction to
18 what I ’m about to ask is going to be because he always
19 tells me your business principles, your wacky ideas that
20 you use in the private sector don’t always work in
21 education.
22 But when I look at this I think back to -- back
23 in the mid-’90s I was hiring electrical and software
24 engineers. Nationwide, we had a shortage of about a half-
25 a-million of them. The problem was pretty easy to solve 74
1 for me. I just had to pay more than the other guys and I
2 could get them. And so when I look at something like this
3 I think, well, the fundamental problem I see is these wage
4 rates look awfully low to me. Like I ’m probably qualified
5 to be a substitute teacher in Pennsylvania but for 18 bucks
6 an hour I ’d rather go play golf because I had the same
7 experiences in the ’80s that you mentioned.
8 I saw this paragraph about "since the school
9 districts in Central Pennsylvania region respect each
10 other’s needs" and referring to have not engaged in price
11 wars, can you tell me a little bit more about that? I mean
12 is it like you have this agreement between you that you’re
13 not going to let the rates go up, which it seems like a bad
14 idea to me, but tell me more about that.
15 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: It’s been
16 ended.
17 MR. BERNHARD: Representative Truitt, that was
18 part of my testimony there. That was a statement put in
19 that in York County our substitute teacher rates that are
20 honored amongst the districts in the county wasn’t to say
21 that the rates would never raise, but rather to -
22 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: And yet you did
23 indicate -
24 MR. BERNHARD: -- but rather to the best of our
25 ability would keep them similar. And yes, the School 75
1 District of the City of York did make a decision at the end
2 of last year to increase that a little bit.
3 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: Do you think that's —
4 I'm wondering why these rates are so low. Like if I'm
5 hiring somebody for a full-time job and let's say I'm going
6 to pay them $50,000 a year, I figure, okay, this person's
7 really going to cost me about 75 with benefits and so
8 forth. If I hire somebody on a temporary basis to do
9 similar work, I'm going to pay them closer to 40 bucks an
10 hour because it's a temporary job. I'm not offering him a
11 long-term arrangement. I'm not offering him benefits and
12 things like that.
13 So to see an hourly rate that really is about
14 half of what the full-time teacher is getting and the full
15 time teacher is getting benefits on top of that, it's just
16 -- to me it looks like a really unattractive thing to do.
17 And so I'm wondering what's holding these wage rates down.
18 And I'm not attacking you. Please understand. I see this
19 all across the entire State. The rates look like they're
20 very low, and what's holding them down so low? Is it -
21 DR. ESHBACH: You know, I've been a part of some
22 of those meetings with other Superintendents where we are
23 kind of a benevolent society and we try to help each other
24 out and not have a price war for substitutes. But
25 sometimes you can't help it. You need to be able to do 76
1 something to generate more interest.
2 I talked about substitute nurses earlier. One
3 school district around us actually increased their rate for
4 substitute nurses to $250 a day compared to my about $115 a
5 day. That doesn’t solve the problem if the pool doesn’t
6 increase. And in that situation it may have solved a
7 temporary problem for them, but it’s my responsibility to
8 try to get out there and increase the interest in our
9 school district and try to garner interest in substitute
10 nurses.
11 We can do that. There’s a greater pool of nurses
12 that are qualified to come in and substitute. Our pool for
13 certified teachers to come in and do this is not as great.
14 So while we do look at -- and we do tend to hold hands and
15 a jump together on some of these things to increase our
16 daily rate -- if the pool is not there, it doesn’t matter
17 how much w e ’re going to pay.
18 Second of all, we do have restrictions on our
19 budget and what we can afford, so we try to stay within
20 those limits.
21 DR. LEICHLITER: It’s a great question, and it’s
22 one that we talk about every year. Lancaster County does a
23 similar thing. W e ’ve had a rate that w e ’ve agreed to. But
24 to give you an example, it is a question of supply and
25 demand. We increased our rates to $110 a day, and the 77
1 Superintendents in our IU have plans to increase that rate
2 over the next three years to $125. It was $100 a day from
3 the year 2000 until 2015, and it was a yearly discussion
4 since I ’ve been Superintendent. However, we did not raise
5 it previous to this year because we had ample supply. So
6 if there’s no need to pay more, why pay more? Now, we see
7 the need to increase that and we are slowly doing that, but
8 with the tight budgets right now, it’s making it difficult.
9 We would have jumped much higher initially but we
10 couldn’t absorb that amount. In fact, there are some
11 Superintendents in our district to can’t commit to that
12 increase because of their funding.
13 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: Budgetary issues, okay.
14 All right. I appreciate the input. Thank you.
15 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Can I put
16 you down as for raising taxes?
17 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: No.
18 Representative McCarter.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you,
20 Mr. Chairman.
21 There have been several comments actually from my
22 colleagues here that I want to make a little bit of comment
23 on. Number one, I look forward to representing with
24 Representative Truitt on the minimum wage bill to $40 an
25 hour. That would be very, very interesting. 78
1 And secondly, for Senator Dinniman, let me assure
2 you, there are many retirees who don't want to go back -
3 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: Of course.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: — and I can assure
5 you, as one of those people who retired from teaching, that
6 this is a far easier job than going back into the classroom
7 even as a substitute. So I would comment on that.
8 And I thank you both really for raising some
9 very, very good points in terms of both the wages that are
10 artificially low. I think we'd all have to agree to that
11 in terms of trying to get qualified people to do those
12 particular jobs.
13 And secondly, and going back to Senator
14 Dinniman's comment relative to districts, and one of the
15 things that I've been puzzled by is, I guess, as he alluded
16 to, is the districts seem very willing to hire
17 Superintendents with an emergency certification to the
18 Department saying that it's a crisis, we have to use this
19 individual to fill that position, and I don't see them
20 getting $40 an hour either in terms of filling that
21 position or the substitute rate.
22 But when it comes to daily subs, districts are
23 very reluctant, it seems, to write that letter or whatever
24 it is, steps you have to take to be able to justify that.
25 Can you explain that to me since we have this crisis of 79
1 subs in many locations? Why is it that districts are
2 reluctant to do that at the lower levels but surely not at
3 the Superintendent level?
4 DR. ESHBACH: I ’ve written those letters this
5 year, so I agree. We are in emergency situations. We have
6 to be able to prove that it’s an emergency situation. I
7 talked about my chemistry vacancy. There’s no chemistry-
8 certified sub out there. I need somebody in the classroom
9 now. I reached out to a retiree and wrote the letter. We
10 have to be willing to do those kinds of things, but you
11 have to be able to also prove that there’s nobody on your
12 list, that they are not willing to come in, and that it
13 truly is an emergency.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Who is requiring that
15 proof at this point? Is it the Department or is it PSERS
16 or who is it that -
17 DR. ESHBACH: Yes, well, PSERS needs to be able
18 to understand that it’s an emergency situation, and we can
19 determine at a local level what that emergency is. But we
20 don’t want to cost someone their pension because they’re
21 doing us a favor, so w e ’re very diligent about making sure
22 that it’s a true emergency. And again, defending the
23 Superintendents, a small pool of qualified people that we
24 can bring in to do that. And so the emergency tends to be
25 much more prevalent. 80
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: For instance, if we go
2 back to, as Representative Roebuck mentioned, that only 15
3 percent of the quantity needed is being filled by the
4 outside contract now that they had outsourced in
5 Philadelphia. Surely that would constitute an emergency,
6 it would seem to me, at the present moment. Now, again,
7 using outside groups to do this, does that take away your
8 authority to be able to write those letters as
9 Superintendents?
10 DR. LEICHLITER: We still have to work in
11 conjunction with the outsourcing company that we’re using
12 to prove to the Department that w e ’re meeting the
13 certification guidelines. So that requirement doesn’t go
14 away. But like Dr. Eshbach, I ’ve written those letters as
15 well, so that’s something that w e ’re willing to use. There
16 is a lot more justification that we have to go through to
17 protect the district but also the substitute.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you very much.
19 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
20 English.
21 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
22 know the clock on the back wall is standing still but it’s
23 moving -
24 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: The one on
25 the -- 81
1 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: — quickly.
2 SENATE DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN DINNIMAN: All of them
3 are standing still.
4 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: Let me just throw out
5 some questions, observations, and just maybe a brief
6 answer, but as far as the number of substitutes just
7 generally, are most of them looking just to come in and be
8 a sub or are most of them looking -- or what are the
9 percentages? Are most of them looking to get a full-time
10 position would be one.
11 Two, I like the idea of retired teachers, but my
12 question would be, as someone mentioned, substitutes, it’s
13 been a 25-year problem in your experience, is this just
14 maybe a couple-of-year problem because of budget increases,
15 budget declines and we just have to get through this part
16 that’s in the snake as it digest the short-term problem?
17 So is there a chilling effect potentially by subs coming
18 back that will further detract people trying to get into
19 the education field, get a full-time job? You’re not going
20 to get a chance to look at more subs. I would imagine
21 that’s how you’re going to cherry-pick the best and the
22 brightest.
23 Third, is there a standard rate? You talk about
24 rates. Is there a rate for the short-term versus the long
25 term or versus specified fields in chemistry and things? 82
1 And then also are you creative in having I'll say
2 rover positions, you know, someone that's just available on
3 Mondays or Tuesdays and Thursdays and they make themselves
4 available so that you know that's kind of your short-term
5 list where you get the go-to?
6 And last, I would imagine probably everyone in
7 this room would maybe love to be a part-time teacher,
8 substitute teacher. They enjoy that interaction and
9 experience with the kids, and is there a way to have maybe
10 just a bachelor's degree and pass your criminal backgrounds
11 so that I can go in and maybe cover the lower short-term
12 needs so that you can prioritize the medium- and long-term
13 needs?
14 So I know it's a lot but I just wanted to kind of
15 get that out for the -
16 DR. ESHBACH: So I think most people are
17 substituting, wanting to be a full-time teacher. I don't
18 think it's a short-term problem. I think it has escalated
19 to this point. I think it's been a problem for years but
20 it's escalated to this point. When you look up the number
21 of certificates that are being issue, I think it's going to
22 continue to be a problem.
23 We do send certificated teachers out of State
24 because the regular full-time jobs aren't available here so
25 they're going to go out to -- North Carolina has a great 83
1 reputation of hiring Pennsylvania teachers. And so there’s
2 a little bit of that drain.
3 And we do things such as the roving substitutes.
4 I have a substitute that I hire three days a week and one
5 that I hire two days a week. I used to do them five days a
6 week, but because of Affordable Care I need to keep them
7 under 30 hours. And they’re guaranteed for that building
8 for that day, so we do look at those.
9 DR. LEICHLITER: And I just want to clarify, in
10 Penn Manor, and I think like most districts, we have
11 different levels of pay. Our problem is with the day-to-
12 day subs, the person coming in because the English teacher
13 is sick. We pay a short-term rate, and that’s for
14 positions that may range from three weeks up to a full
15 semester, and for that we pay a bonus to that daily rate.
16 So they get a slightly higher rate.
17 If you’re a long-term substitute, and that for us
18 is 90 days or more, then we pay the starting salary on a
19 per diem rate. We don’t have trouble with long-term
20 substitutes, and we don’t have trouble with the short-term
21 positions. It really is the day-to-day that w e ’re seeing
22 the problem.
23 MR. BERNHARD: At the School District of the City
24 of York the question was the number of subs that would like
25 full-time jobs versus staying subs. I would tell you the 84
1 vast majority would like full-time opportunity.
2 Rates, we currently compensate our subs at $150 a
3 day, and we still have a struggle finding subs for that
4 amount of money.
5 It was mentioned before about the rovers. In
6 York this year we added on a daily basis four subs at the
7 high school and two each at the K-8s just to be there in
8 the event of absences. Yes, we have the planned absences
9 and there are also the leaves of absence of a longer
10 duration that come up sometimes quicker than not.
11 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: Thank you, gentlemen.
12 Thank you, Mr. Chair.
13 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
14 Tallman.
15 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 This question has already been asked, but since
17 Dr. Eshbach used to abuse me in a different position asking
18 me questions, I ’m going to ask it anyway, a little
19 different format than what Representative English asked it.
20 Being a former school director and my wife being
21 a former teacher, the process, as I remember, was
22 substitute, then long-term sub to a full-time. And
23 typically, when I was a school director, we hired for full
24 time from our substitute list. And I know Representative
25 English -- is that still the typical path to a full-time 85
1 position in your three school districts?
2 DR. ESHBACH: Yes and no. I mean, we hire the
3 best person for the job that is available. Sometimes,
4 we're able to see that person coming through a day-to-day
5 or a long-term sub position and say, yes, this is exactly
6 the person we want. Sometimes it's a person fresh out of
7 school.
8 So I've hired my substitutes for permanent
9 positions and I've not hired my substitutes. I feel very
10 strongly that we need to find the best person for the job,
11 and you don't just earn a job by doing time. We need the
12 best person for the job. So we've had both situations.
13 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you.
14 DR. LEICHLITER: The same for Penn Manor, the
15 same situation, more common in elementary to use them in
16 that progression just because they can teach in multiple
17 levels in classrooms.
18 MR. BERNHARD: And my comments are identical.
19 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Thank you,
20 gentlemen, for your testimony today and appreciate it very
21 much.
22 With that, we will have our next panel come
23 forward. We have Dr. Wayde Killmeyer, who is the Executive
24 Director of the Midwestern Intermediate Unit 14, as well as
25 Flip Steinour, if I've got the name correct, the Director 86
1 of Human Resources, serves at the Lancaster-Lebanon
2 Intermediate Unit 13; and Rebecca Roberts-Malamis -- wow, I
3 got that right -- Esquire, who is the in-house legal
4 counsel and Assistant to the Executive Director of the
5 Bucks County Intermediate Unit. Wow, thank you.
6 You may proceed when you’re ready.
7 DR. KILLMEYER: Thank you. Good morning,
8 Chairman Smucker, Chairman Dinniman, Chairman Saylor, and
9 Chairman Roebuck. We appreciate the opportunity to testify
10 here. Being respectful of your time, w e ’re not going to
11 read through our testimony but rather try to have a brief
12 discussion with you.
13 Some of the issues have already been brought up.
14 You heard the words guest teacher brought up several times.
15 I’m the Executive Director of Midwestern Intermediate Unit
16 4, not 14, and we do run a guest teacher program, so I ’d
17 like to explain a little bit of what that’s about.
18 We form a consortium with the LEAs within our
19 intermediate unit. We train people who would like to be
20 substitute teachers, and then we apply for an emergency
21 certificate on behalf of those people, and they can sub
22 anywhere within that consortium. So, for example, in my
23 intermediate unit we have 27 school districts. We have
24 three CTCs, or vo-techs as you might call them. We have
25 one charter school, and we have the intermediate unit 87
1 itself that’s 32 entities, all of whom are short of
2 substitute teachers. All 32 of those joined our consortium
3 this year, and we were able to train substitute teachers
4 that are usable by all of those entities.
5 I heard the question of honoring out-of-state
6 certificates from Representative Longietti. It’s a three-
7 day training that we do in our guest teacher program, but
8 if someone has a degree in education or an out-of-state
9 certificate, they only have to do one day of the training,
10 which is to get to know Pennsylvania regulations rather
11 than the State that they were trained in.
12 Let’s see. Where was I? We had the question of
13 having retirees sub and does this constitute a double dip,
14 so I would ask you to consider the idea that they could
15 retire, go immediately to one of the outside staffing
16 agencies and work for them and substitute every day. And
17 so we are not getting the same benefit of having those
18 retirees that the outside staffing agencies would have to
19 being able to use them.
20 On the subject, though, the outside staffing
21 agencies, we have Kelly Services. A lot of our districts
22 in my IU use Kelly Services. Knowing that our districts
23 and the IU itself have a great need for subs and knowing
24 that Kelly doesn’t have the fill rates that they promised,
25 we reached out and formed a partnership with them. And so 88
1 Kelly Services advertises our guest teacher program to
2 anybody who calls them and says that they would like to
3 substitute. They say, well, we can’t certify you but the
4 intermediate unit can. And in exchange, on the last day of
5 our training, we have Kelly come in and talk to those
6 substitutes who would like to sign on with them.
7 We increase the size of Kelly’s pool, they
8 increase our number of participants. And w e ’ve only had
9 this partnership for a short time but w e ’ve seen a 50
10 percent increase in the number of people that we see coming
11 into our guest teacher training program since our
12 partnership with Kelly. So it doesn’t cost us anything, it
13 doesn’t cost our districts anything, and w e ’ve been able to
14 increase the substitute pool slightly by that means.
15 To talk a little bit about what goes on in his
16 IU, I ’ll introduce Flip Steinour, the HR Director at IU 13.
17 MR. STEINOUR: Thank you, Dr. Killmeyer. And
18 good afternoon, Chairmen and honorable Members of the
19 Committee.
20 I work for IU 13, which is in Senator Smucker’s
21 area at Lancaster and Lebanon. However, I also have served
22 previously as the HR Director at Capital Area Intermediate
23 Unit and Lincoln Intermediate Unit. I ’ve worked 21 years
24 in an intermediate unit system as the HR Director.
25 And I have to tell you, as you’ve heard from 89
1 other testimony this morning, that our shortage of
2 substitutes in my 21 years in service, we are at the most
3 significant point that I've seen in that timeline. And the
4 shortage just continues to grow. And again, you've heard
5 that from several other people this morning. I wanted to
6 share that with you.
7 I would like to also share with you a little bit
8 about the intermediate unit shortage within the
9 intermediate unit system itself. As you well know, school
10 districts provide a lot of their own special education
11 programs, and when they choose to outsource their special
12 education programs to intermediate units, we then pick up
13 some significant challenging students that have behavioral
14 issues, toileting and personal care, until age 21. And
15 those are some things that are challenges within the
16 intermediate unit system.
17 So when substitutes come in and have an option of
18 working within a regular education setting or working
19 within an intermediate unit system, working with the
20 students that we serve and having to take on personal
21 protective equipment to make sure that they remain safe
22 along the way, to dealing with behaviors that are often -
23 sometimes abusive language is used in the classroom because
24 of the disabilities of the students. It becomes a real
25 challenge for those substitutes to decide to say I want to 90
1 work within that intermediate unit system versus going out
2 and working in a school district.
3 So the shortage that already exists that you’ve
4 heard that our school districts are feeling is exacerbated
5 to another level at an intermediate unit. That’s what I ’m
6 hoping to share with you as part of that message along the
7 way.
8 Dr. Killmeyer shared with you a little bit about
9 the guest teacher program, and the guest teacher training
10 has been in existence for over 15 years within the
11 Commonwealth, and it’s been a great program and w e ’re
12 really happy to be part of that.
13 One of the successes I would share with you, a
14 story I share about why I think this program is so good is
15 that we had an example of a teacher within Capital Area
16 Intermediate Unit when I was there. A person came from
17 Hershey Foods who has a chemistry background, and I ’ve
18 heard a couple of you just talking about your engineering
19 backgrounds and the like, so I just want to share a little
20 story.
21 Capital Area Intermediate Unit had a chemist come
22 in from Hershey Foods, and one of his claims to fame after
23 working 10 years at Hershey Foods was to develop an almond
24 that would last six months instead of three months, and it
25 took a team of scientists to do that, to build and create 91
1 an almond that would last that long.
2 That was an interesting story, but what he was
3 able to do was go into a classroom and to talk about
4 chemistry and why chemistry is so important and why it’s
5 not just about, oh, come in here and sit and listen and
6 learn the periodic table. It’s about what you can do in
7 real-life application. That’s the power of guest teacher
8 programs. They bring that to the forefront for the
9 students that we serve.
10 Our intermediate unit has run the guest teacher
11 program for, again, it’s been over 15 years. W e ’ve taken
12 it one step further this past year, and we know that in
13 most intermediate units that run the guest teacher program,
14 you’re tied to a specific time per year that you run the
15 program. So you might run it two times a year or three
16 times per year.
17 We then decided, you know what, we have districts
18 who are sitting out there waiting for substitutes right
19 now. So we ended up taking our guest teacher program and
20 making it -- we run it both live twice per year but w e ’ve
21 also made it virtual so that when we find an applicant who
22 says I really want to start guest teaching and being a
23 substitute in our school districts and I really want to do
24 it sooner than later, if our next session of training is
25 not until December, that person is live and ready to go 92
1 now, and if we don't have an option for them available, we
2 may lose them as a substitute teacher. So we've made our
3 guest teacher training program now virtual so that they can
4 go on the system and get the training live on the system at
5 their convenience and then become available to our school
6 districts along the way.
7 The last thing -- and Dr. Leichliter represented
8 this earlier -- our intermediate unit last year created a
9 substitute job fair. We knew that the shortage was
10 happening, and it was such a significant pain for our
11 districts that we created a substitute job fair. So all of
12 our school districts participated. We were able to bring
13 in -- our testimony that I have provided for you is over
14 150 people. I actually went back and checked that number.
15 It was actually over 300 people is what we ended up
16 bringing in by that fair. We made a significant difference
17 by doing that, by bringing these people in and getting them
18 out to be able to help our districts with their shortness
19 in the staffing in the substitute area.
20 Our newest venture is that our neighboring
21 intermediate units around Lancaster and Lebanon County, I'm
22 working with them as we speak to try to hold a simultaneous
23 substitute fair that we can use advertising both over
24 television, radio, and print media to try to make a
25 substitute fair day to try to bring more of these potential 93
1 applicants that can come in and either if they’re already
2 certified, great, we can get them ready to go and get the
3 teaching, or if they’re not certificated already, we can
4 get them and get them through and processed through our
5 various guest teacher programs and get them out and serve
6 in the classrooms. And we think that’s going to be one of
7 the things that we can do to help serve the shortage with
8 our districts and what they’re feeling at this point in
9 time.
10 So with that, I ’m going to turn this over now to
11 Rebecca Roberts-Malamis. Rebecca works for, as you heard,
12 Bucks County Intermediate Unit. She’s counsel for them and
13 runs the HR program as well.
14 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: Good morning. Actually, I
15 think it’s good afternoon now. So thank you very much, and
16 thank you, distinguished Committee Members, for holding
17 this hearing today and really giving us an opportunity to
18 discuss this very, very important issue.
19 I do serve as the Assistant to the Executive
20 Director and the in-house legal counsel to the Bucks County
21 Intermediate Unit. In that position, I oversee human
22 resources and all hiring and certifications, including the
23 hiring and certifications of day-to-day substitute
24 teachers.
25 I recognize that we are a little bit short on 94
1 time. I certainly do not want to read testimony to you,
2 but I would like to provide you with a very brief
3 background on the substitute shortage that w e ’re facing in
4 Bucks County, as well as focus specifically on some of the
5 barriers to trying to hire substitute teachers, and then
6 provide you with some possible solutions for you to
7 consider from a legislative context.
8 First and foremost, similar to Midwestern
9 Intermediate Unit and Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit,
10 Bucks County Intermediate Unit also runs a guest teacher
11 training program on behalf of our Bucks County school
12 districts. And as a part of that program, we offer it four
13 to five times a year. It’s a two-day training program, and
14 we cover topics that we believe it’s very important for
15 individuals who have a bachelor’s degree but who do not
16 have an education degree but may need training in order to
17 handle a classroom.
18 So such topics are classroom management, behavior
19 management, individual education plans, how to work with
20 students who have multiple disabilities, autism, or
21 students with emotional support. We also cover topics such
22 as how to successfully implement a lesson plan and also
23 mandated requirements for child abuse recognition and
24 reporting.
25 In addition to the actual content training, our 95
1 intermediate unit will also verify, on behalf of our school
2 districts and on behalf of any third-party substitute
3 staffing company they may be working with, that the
4 individuals have the required background certifications:
5 the Act 34 Pennsylvania State Police clearance; the child
6 abuse clearance; the FBI fingerprint report; a school
7 health form, including the TB and physical form; and then
8 finally PDE Form 6004 pertaining to arrests and
9 convictions; and the Act 168 Sexual Misconduct and Child
10 Abuse Release and Disclosure form.
11 As the economy has increased, we have noticed
12 that the demand for our training program has steadily
13 decreased. By way of an example, in 2009-2010, just six
14 short years ago, PDE granted 810 permits on behalf of the
15 Bucks County Intermediate Unit for day-to-day substitute
16 teachers. This past school year in 2014-2015, we were only
17 issued 309 permits, down almost 500 permits from a few
18 years ago.
19 Our daily fill rates across the county are also
20 down significantly. I know some of you have asked for
21 data. I can provide data on Bucks County. In 2009-2010 it
22 was not uncommon for our IU to fill 85 to 90 percent of all
23 available jobs in our IU classrooms. For our Bucks County
24 school districts, they nearly always were able to have 100
25 percent fill rates for substitutes in their classrooms. 96
1 This past school year in 2014-2015 it was not
2 uncommon for us to have fill rates of 70 percent or less,
3 which meant in our IU classrooms for any given day, 30 to
4 40 percent of our classrooms would have open positions with
5 no substitutes available to fill those positions. The same
6 thing is true for our Bucks County school districts. They
7 have very similar fill rates.
8 So what happens when you don't have adequate
9 staffing or substitutes to fill these positions? You
10 really have no choice but to have other staff members fill
11 in for those positions. So oftentimes, our supervisors
12 will have to put aside what their schedule is for the day
13 and go into the classroom. Or other staff members such as
14 behavior analysts, social workers, psychologists, school
15 counselors, they will go in and serve as substitutes for
16 the day. This way, we are able to still ensure student
17 safety and at the same time maintain the required staff-
18 student-teacher ratios.
19 Now, I'd like to discuss some of the burdens
20 associated with hiring day-to-day substitutes. In 2013
21 2014 Federal mandates under the Affordable Care Act were
22 enacted. The Affordable Care Act requires that all
23 employers provide medical benefits to any employee -- this
24 includes day-to-day substitutes -- who work 30 or more
25 hours in a week. 97
1 Typically, the BCIU and our school districts
2 would not provide health benefits to day-to-day
3 substitutes. Substitutes work a very flexible schedule.
4 They choose jobs when and where they want, and they are
5 generally paid -- and I know some of you have already asked
6 questions about this -- at least in Bucks County our
7 substitutes generally make around $100 a day or about $14
8 an hour.
9 But due to the flexible and itinerant nature of
10 the job, this group had not previously been offered health
11 benefits. Once the Affordable Care Act mandates came into
12 effect, it necessitated a change in how we handle this
13 group of employees.
14 Benefits offered in the public education sector,
15 as I am sure most of you are aware, are very generous. In
16 Bucks County our health benefits may cost $20,000 per
17 employee for family coverage. The requirement that we
18 provide this level of coverage to this group of employees
19 that had not previously received benefits was really very
20 cost-prohibitive for a lot of our school districts. So
21 most school districts were forced to limit substitutes to
22 only working fewer than 30 hours, maybe only four days a
23 week so that they would serve fewer than 30 hours in a
24 workweek.
25 In addition to that employer mandate, any 98
1 substitute who works more than 80 days in a school year
2 also qualifies for retirement benefits under PSERS, the
3 Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System. The PSERS
4 contribution rates for this school year are more than 26
5 percent of salary.
6 So these two factors, the ACA-mandated health
7 benefit requirement and our high PSERS rates, together make
8 it almost too costly for BCIU and most school districts in
9 Bucks County to continue to hire day-to-day substitutes as
10 their own employees.
11 On behalf of our IU, we chose to partner with an
12 educational staffing company who is able to continue to pay
13 our substitutes that same rate of pay of $100 a day but at
14 a significantly less comprehensive staffing rate of pay
15 than we at the IU could.
16 And how are they able to do that? Since
17 educational staffing agencies are not school districts,
18 they do not pay into PSERS. And similarly, while they are
19 required to fulfill the mandates of the Affordable Care
20 Act, most of them are able to do so by simply offering
21 minimal essential coverage plans that meet the requirements
22 of the act but are not nearly as high as the generous
23 benefits that some of our school districts offer.
24 So now, very briefly, I ’d like to discuss some
25 legislative solutions for your consideration. Please 99
1 understand that while we believe that the economy directly
2 impacts our ability to recruit and train qualified
3 substitute employees, there are factors that could be
4 changed that would allow us more flexibility. Making day-
5 to-day substitutes exempt from mandated PSERS contributions
6 would reduce the burdens on IUs and school districts.
7 In fact, in Bucks County most of our substitutes
8 fall into one of four categories, and they do not
9 necessarily need or rely on a funded retirement plan.
10 These categories are recent college graduates. Many of our
11 substitutes are fresh out of college and they are looking
12 for full-time employment. They want to be able to earn
13 money, but they also still want the flexibility of being
14 able to go out on job interviews and pursue a career in
15 their chosen field.
16 The second category is retirees, nonschool
17 retirees, simply retirees. And we attract a large number
18 of nonschool retirees who are looking for additional
19 income. They appreciate the flexibility of being able to
20 work hours and days that they want to work and they like
21 accepting assignment close to their own home.
22 We also have stay-at-home parents. A lot of our
23 substitutes are attracted to a workday that coincides with
24 their own children’s school schedule. And because they are
25 not the full-time wage earners of the family, they are not 100
1 necessarily looking for retirement benefits.
2 And finally, as many of my colleagues have
3 already spoken to you about, our preferred substitutes are
4 our retired teachers. They do not need to pay into the
5 PSERS retirement fund because they are generally already
6 collecting from this fund. Unfortunately, however, under
7 PSERS guidelines, retirees are only able to work in a
8 school district in emergency situations and then only if
9 certain requirements are met.
10 If the legislature could relax these PSERS
11 requirements and specifically exempt retired teachers who
12 are willing to serve as day-to-day substitutes from these
13 burdensome restrictions, it would greatly help us find
14 quality substitutes and reduce the substitute shortage that
15 we are currently facing.
16 And then finally, another consideration would be
17 the requirements necessary to serve as a substitute
18 teacher. You've already heard that Pennsylvania is very
19 strict in those requirements, requiring individuals to have
20 a four-year college degree from an accredited university.
21 We believe that in addition to having the necessary
22 education that really sometimes just having experience in a
23 classroom can make up for the fact that you don't have a
24 four-year college degree. Some of our best substitutes are
25 our classroom assistants and our program aides who have 101
1 been in the classroom working with those students. When
2 the teacher calls out sick for the day, it would be helpful
3 if we would be able to use those program aides as the
4 teacher of record in the classroom because they really do
5 understand the students and they understand what the flow
6 of the classroom is for the day.
7 So we would ask that you consider some sort of
8 consideration about allowing an exception for individuals
9 either who have experience already as an instructional
10 assistant or a program aide in the classroom or who
11 possibly have at least 60 college credits and have
12 completed some sort of a guest teacher training program.
13 So I want to thank you for your time today and
14 for the opportunity to discuss this very important issue.
15 I want to turn the mike now back to Dr. Killmeyer for
16 concluding remarks on behalf of the Pennsylvania
17 Association of Intermediate Units.
18 DR. KILLMEYER: I would just like to thank you
19 again for listening to our testimony and remind you that
20 intermediate units are service agencies, and so w e ’re ready
21 to help serve in this capacity to help in any way that we
22 can.
23 And w e ’ll take your questions now.
24 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I recognize
25 Senator Lloyd Smucker, Chairman. 102
1 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: This is just a
2 clarification. This goes to the idea w e ’ve been talking
3 here about allowing retirees who are in the PSERS system to
4 serve as substitutes, and we currently can’t do that under
5 the guidelines. But I learned from the previous testifiers
6 and that you mentioned as well that in emergency situations
7 apparently you can. So I ’d like to understand that a
8 little more.
9 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: Sure. PSERS does allow if
10 a school district would require it to be an emergency
11 situation. So, for example, if a school board would
12 approve a resolution declaring an emergency situation, and
13 then the school district would send a letter to PSERS along
14 with that resolution, they do allow the hiring of retirees.
15 However, just the thing that makes it a little
16 tricky is that when you do hire retiree, you have to show
17 that you made every effort to first hire a non-retiree. So
18 in the case of day-to-day substitutes what that means is on
19 it daily basis you would have to set your -- I want to call
20 it Aesop. Most of us use of some sort of electronic
21 program that helps us track our subs, and then they log
22 online and they look at what sub positions they want for
23 the day.
24 You’d have to limit that for a certain period of
25 time to non-retirees first, and then if you couldn’t fill 103
1 it with a non-retiree, open it up to a retiree. So it just
2 requires a lot of management.
3 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you.
4 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
5 Truitt.
6 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
7 Thank you for your testimonies. I'd like to ask
8 you more about your guest teacher program, but time doesn't
9 really allow.
10 Notwithstanding what I said earlier, I support,
11 think, most of the concepts that you guys have suggested or
12 that the different groups have suggested in terms of how to
13 fix this problem, but the one that I'm -- and that's not
14 that I don't -- I support but I wonder if it's really going
15 to help is this thing about not requiring the substitutes
16 to be in the PSERS program.
17 Again, going back to what I said before, it seems
18 to me all you're doing is lowering the compensation for a
19 potential substitute teacher, which might actually shrink
20 your pool even further. So if I'm not interested in
21 working for 14 bucks an hour with benefits, I'm even less
22 interested in working for 14 bucks an hour without
23 benefits. Am I missing something? How does not putting
24 the substitutes into the PSERS program help solve the
25 supply problem? 104
1 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: Do you want to take that?
2 DR. KILLMEYER: Okay, sure. There are a couple
3 answers. One is that it makes it less costly for the
4 district itself. I was a school Superintendent prior to
5 being an Executive Director, and I know every year when we
6 went over the budget, if I wanted to increase the money
7 that I was going to pay to subs, I was questioned about
8 that by the board. And normally, they would not want to
9 allow me to do that.
10 And so not having funding in general to pay -
11 you know, w e ’re furloughing teachers. Not having money to
12 pay the teachers that we have, it’s unlikely the board
13 would approve me to put in more money to pay substitutes,
14 which would be taken away if we didn’t have to pay into
15 PSERS for them. So it becomes less costly for the
16 district.
17 The other is the idea that was mentioned before
18 about a bidding war among entities. Then if I raise my sub
19 rate to $110, then the district down the road feels that
20 they have to raise there’s to 120 and somebody feels they
21 have to -- that doesn’t grow the pool any. It just makes
22 us fight amongst ourselves for the existing resources.
23 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: And I would just add to
24 that. I think that at least in Bucks County, so it maybe
25 different regionally, but at least in Bucks County most of 105
1 our day-to-day substitutes, they are not looking at this as
2 a career. This is not a career that they’re going to do
3 for a long period of time that they’re going to retire
4 from. Our preferred substitutes are our retirees. But in
5 terms of stay-at-home parents, other nonschool retirees, or
6 even recent college graduates who are just subbing for four
7 to six months while they look for that full-time job in
8 their chosen field, they’re not really looking to retire
9 from substitute teaching, so there’s really not a need for
10 a retirement fund.
11 REPRESENTATIVE TRUITT: And I agree that bringing
12 retirees, college students, other people into the pool is
13 helpful. If you’re going to say by not putting them in a
14 PSERS plan you’re going to save money and you’re going to
15 use that in turn to raise their hourly rate, then I agree
16 that would increase the pool. I think that’s probably one
17 area where I disagree with most of the testimony I ’ve heard
18 today is I think if you paid them more, you’d be surprised
19 more people would come out of the woodwork who are willing
20 to do it.
21 But thank you for your input. It’s great to have
22 you here today.
23 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
24 McCarter.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you, 106
1 Mr. Chairman.
2 I just want to go back to one point, too, to
3 clarify. I think it was stated, and I believe it was
4 Dr. Killmeyer, that you suggested that if a retiree goes to
5 a substitute agency and signs up with a substitute agency,
6 that they are then covered by the -- no longer threatened
7 by the loss of their pension through PSERS?
8 DR. KILLMEYER: That's correct. PSERS doesn't
9 want substitutes to go back into work in school districts,
10 but any retiree can work for private industry and PSERS has
11 nothing to say about that.
12 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: And they have not said
13 anything about that to the best of your knowledge?
14 DR. KILLMEYER: To the best of my knowledge, they
15 haven't.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Okay.
17 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We definitely
18 need to fix that.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Okay. We'll leave it
20 go at that at the present moment.
21 The second point, just to go back also, did I
22 hear -- and again, it was said earlier but I'm not sure, is
23 it a standard policy of the IUs to help coordinate the
24 basic substitute rates between the districts? Is that
25 suggested so that nobody raises above anybody? 107
1 DR. KILLMEYER: I would not say that an IU is
2 involved in price-fixing or arranging among districts that
3 they -- I think they might make gentlemen’s agreements
4 among themselves, but it’s not an IU function to set those
5 prices.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Okay. Thank you.
7 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: I just want to comment on
8 that. Our IU has no role at all in what our school
9 districts pay in terms of substitute pay. They decide that
10 all on their own.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Thank you very much.
12 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative
13 English.
14 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
15 So what’s the practical difference if the school
16 district is paying -- hiring their own staff to coordinate
17 substitutes versus outsourcing? And it seems like Kelly is
18 the most popular. And having in effect a lower wage rate
19 because they’re going to take a cut because they’re doing
20 the administrative process versus in-house a school
21 district doing it but having to have extra staff to
22 coordinate that. Any insight?
23 DR. KILLMEYER: I believe the theory is that if
24 we have an employee who does nothing but coordinate
25 substitutes, we save the cost of that employee by 108
1 contracting out the work. And so although the substitute
2 gets the same amount of money that they got when they were
3 working directly for the entity, the entity pays a higher
4 amount to Kelly for that person. So the substitute might
5 still get their $100 a day, but Kelly is obviously not
6 collecting $100 a day or they wouldn’t be making any money.
7 They’re collecting maybe $120 a day, and where it comes out
8 in the wash is for the entity to not have an employee
9 coordinating that activity.
10 REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH: Thank you.
11 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I ’ll ask, I
12 guess, the final question.
13 It seems to me, as I talk to students who are
14 going into education today, that career things when I go in
15 and talk at the high schools, everybody seems to love going
16 into elementary education. They love the idea that they
17 can have the most impact. It seems to me -- and again,
18 maybe my perception is wrong -- that filling high school
19 positions are the most difficult.
20 And what I ’m hearing from these students who are
21 going into education, one, they feel they have a better
22 impact on the elementary ed students, you know, children,
23 younger children, but the comment I get from them on a
24 regular basis -- and these are kids who are in high school
25 who are looking to go to college and come out as teachers 109
1 -- is the reason they really don’t want to be a high school
2 teacher is because of discipline issues. Are you hearing
3 the same thing or are the guidance counselors in our school
4 who are counseling students?
5 Because I remind students all the time they’re
6 going into education. W e ’ve got 9,000 students in
7 Pennsylvania graduating to go in to be teachers this year
8 and every year just about, and that if you’re going into
9 elementary education, it’s far more competitive than it is
10 high school education. But it doesn’t seem to change them.
11 And it seems to be -- again, it comes back to -- and again,
12 maybe it’s a misconception that these students have, but
13 they are the students who are in high school who are going
14 on to college that the reason they don’t want to be in
15 secondary education is the issue of discipline. Any
16 comments on that? And I ’ll leave that be the last
17 question.
18 DR. KILLMEYER: I ’ll start with that one, and I
19 can give you some anecdotal evidence. I was a high school
20 teacher. My daughter is a high school teacher, although
21 she had to go to Virginia to get a job teaching because she
22 couldn’t find one in Pennsylvania. And there are people
23 who enjoy teaching smaller kids and there are people who
24 enjoy teaching bigger kids. And we have a saying in
25 school, bigger kids, bigger problems. So although I never 110
1 found discipline in high school to be insurmountable, there
2 are people who would find that to be a deterrent. I can
3 agree with.
4 And I will say that the certificates are very,
5 very difficult to get to teach high school subjects. The
6 math test that I had to take to get my math teaching
7 certificate was probably the most difficult test I ever had
8 to take in my life, and so I can only imagine what people
9 in chemistry and physics have to go through to get their
10 certificates. Whereas I think we all know elementary
11 school curriculum. And I'm not saying it's easy but I
12 think comparing a physics teacher to being an elementary
13 teacher, I think the physics certificate is probably harder
14 to get.
15 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: Well, I think that's the
16 value of the guest teacher training program because
17 classroom management is one of the most difficult aspects
18 of being a teacher. And we all know that there are ways
19 that you can manage your classroom and there are ways that
20 you can engage students so that behavior difficulties are
21 kept to a minimum. And part of what we do with all of our
22 IU guest teacher training programs is spend a lot of time
23 talking about classroom management and how to keep students
24 engaged.
25 HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Representative 111
1 O ’Neill.
2 REPRESENTATIVE O ’NEILL: Thank you. I actually
3 should have asked this earlier. Do you know throughout
4 your counties -- I remember back in the day when I was a
5 student we had Mrs. Shuck. Mrs. Shuck was the permanent,
6 full-time substitute. She was like any other teacher. She
7 came in every day and she was the first to, you know,
8 whatever class needed a substitute teacher. But she came
9 every day. She was in the yearbook. She was at the
10 teacher faculty meetings, that type of thing, because she
11 was a member of the staff.
12 And then I remember when I was teaching, we had a
13 similar person in the school who later became the, what do
14 you call it, in-school suspension guy, and did that
15 forever, and God bless him. And then the district switched
16 where they had district-wide type of people like that. Is
17 that a thing of the past, because it seems to me that would
18 help with this situation.
19 I mean I understand you have to pay them salary,
20 the benefits, the PSERS, the whole nine yards, but I think
21 you would attract more people, and it’s a good way for
22 someone who is looking to become a teacher to get their
23 foot in the door in a district. So I don’t know. Do you
24 see that at all? Like in Bucks County, do you see that
25 with the schools or wherever? 112
1 MS. ROBERTS-MALAMIS: We do. Those positions
2 still exist. Generally, those positions are not day-to-day
3 substitute positions, but those are used more for our long
4 term substitutes. If we know that an individual is going
5 out for long-term leave of some sort, then we do have what
6 we call our floating substitutes, and they’re covered under
7 collective bargaining agreement.
8 We also have at the IU what we call prep
9 substitutes, and these are substitutes that are full-time
10 employees covered under the bargaining agreement. They
11 make teacher salaries, but they are going into our IU
12 classrooms and relieving teachers for a couple of hours so
13 that they can have adequate prep time, because our IU
14 students, as Flip described them, some of these classrooms
15 are difficult and they have students that need specialized
16 teachers to handle some of those behaviors. So we do need
17 to keep full-time individuals on staff that serve in those
18 type of substitute capacities.
19 REPRESENTATIVE O ’NEILL: Great. Thank you.
20 MR. STEINOUR: Very similar to what Rebecca said,
21 we actually had floaters, permanent floaters. We had
22 multiple permanent floaters that we do exactly what you’re
23 describing. They worked 190 days per year, full-time
24 salaries, benefits, and the whole package, and we ended up
25 trying to pull that away because of the cost associated to 113
1 it. But that's back on the table now because of the
2 shortage that we're having now. We're now building budgets
3 with building back floaters into the system to be able to
4 help us offset with the shortage that we're having.
5 DR. KILLMEYER: If I could add one more thing,
6 sometimes geography works against us, and my intermediate
7 unit covers three pretty large rural districts. And so to
8 find somebody who's going to come in as a sub every day and
9 not know to what end of Butler County or Mercer County
10 they're going to go, it'd be pretty tough for the low pay
11 that substitutes get. By the time they've put gas in their
12 car and traveled wherever they're going, half their pay is
13 gone before they see the first nickel.
14 SENATE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SMUCKER: Thank you to
15 each of you for testifying. As with the other testifiers,
16 I think we've had a pretty comprehensive look at the
17 situation in regards to substitutes across the Commonwealth
18 and all of our school districts. I think we've heard of a
19 number of things that the IUs and others and schools
20 themselves are doing to address the situation, but I do
21 think we've also heard some potential commonsense
22 legislative solutions that could increase the pool so that
23 we are better able to meet the vacancies that we have.
24 So I appreciate all the Members of both
25 Committees for being here. I appreciate Chairman Saylor 114
1 for chairing the hearing with me and look forward to, I
2 think, looking at this with other Members of the Senate
3 Committee, other Members of the House Education Committee
4 to see whether indeed we can advance some legislation that
5 could help.
6 So thank you for being here.
7 DR. KILLMEYER: Thank you.
8 MR. STEINOUR: Thank you.
9
10 (The hearing concluded at 12:43 p.m.) 115
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Transcription Services