Fairfax County Public Schools has created a new position on some school campuses aimed at ensuring classes are covered when a teacher is absent.
Joanne Jackson, project administrator in the Virginia school system’s Office of Substitute Employment, said the county started using site-based substitute teachers as part of a pilot program in March. Based on feedback and data, she said, the county opted to expand the program to more schools for the upcoming school year.
Site-based substitute teachers are hired to work in one school, and can work in various settings, including special education, art, music, physical education, library, world language or other classes. They earn $25.61 per hour and are eligible for benefits if they average 30 hours per week.
There’s a lot of flexibility involved in the role, Jackson said. At an elementary school, for example, a site-based substitute may be a third grade teacher one day and a PE teacher the next.
“So if a school has a vacancy, they’ve put it out there and no substitute has picked it up, they will have a site-based substitute, where they can use that site-based substitute to fill that open vacancy,” Jackson said.
The school system has a pool of over 4,000 regular substitute teachers, but averages between 1,500 and 2,200 requests per day, Jackson said. It’s also hoping to offer incentives for the number of days worked and working on hard-to-fill days, as it did last year.
The county is actively hiring the site-based substitutes, Jackson said, but every school won’t have one. The goal is to hire them at “selected schools throughout Fairfax County that have been identified where their fill rates are a little bit lower than we’d like to see them,” she said.
“We’re trying to bring in site-based substitutes who will be available to accept a variety of jobs at that school,” Jackson said.
More information about the site-based substitute role is available on the school system’s website.
