LEWISTON — After hiring a private company to find substitute teachers, the problem of staffing classrooms is getting worse, the School Committee was told Monday night.
Last year, Kelly Educational Staffing was hired by the School Department to find substitute teachers, because for several years, schools had a fill rate of about 75 percent. That meant principals had to scramble to cover classrooms.
Kelly Educational Staffing said in April that it would improve the fill rate to 95 percent. It took over hiring substitutes in the fall. So far, its fill rate about 65 percent, School Committee members were told Monday night.
Committee member Paul St. Pierre said it was “extremely disturbing.”
The point of going with Kelly was “they were going to provide an 80 to 90 percent fill rate,” he said. “This is a serious problem. We’re spending money on a contract with an organization; they don’t have the capacity to begin to give us the service they promised.”
Committee member Jim Handy said, “Kelly is not filling its responsibility,” and that he’s received complaints about Kelly from teachers.
“Teachers are finding it difficult to get answers from Kelly,” Handy said. “There’s no human touch. Kelly is there for warehousing, getting heads in there.”
The system isn’t working, he said.
No one from Kelly Services spoke at Monday night’s meeting.
Superintendent Bill Webster said a big part of the problem is that Lewiston isn’t finding enough people to hire as educational technicians. The vacancy rate for ed techs is so high that more than half of the substitutes found opt to fill in for ed tech vacancies, as opposed to taking over a classroom.
“If we had filled our positions, we would not have a problem,” Webster said. “That doesn’t mean Kelly shouldn’t be doing a lot more.” If Lewiston schools “had done our job in filling the vacancies, we would be at a 90 percent fill rate.”
“We can’t attract ed techs,” he said. “We are not getting any applications for positions that have been posted since the summer.”
Androscoggin County has the lowest unemployment rate in Maine, 3.8 percent, Webster said.
“That was an education for me,” he said. “What’s important for us is to broaden how we attract candidates for positions.”
Kelly is adding to the substitute pool each week, Webster said.
“We expect improvement,” he said.
If Lewiston stopped using Kelly Services, “we would be much worse off,” Webster said. “Now we don’t have the resources to do as good a job, as bad as it may be.”
In the spring, Lewiston boosted pay for ed techs to $100 a day for a person with a four-year degree. Kelly receives $40 for the overhead and recruitment, which means the total cost is $140 a day per substitute.
Part of the solution, several officials agreed, is to improve the pay for ed techs. A beginning ed tech is paid $13.28 an hour. Increasing the pay will be considered in upcoming discussions, officials said.
Meanwhile, Lewiston schools will initiate contracts with other staffing agencies, including Manpower, to find more substitute teachers.
The committee will be given updates, Webster said.
The committee also passed a second reading on an updated dress code that came from high school students.
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