Substitute teachers for Worcester Public Schools will see a pay raise this school year as the district tries to attract more staff.
The district’s school committee unanimously approved a request from Superintendent Rachel Monárrez on Thursday to increase substitutes’ daily pay from $85 to $110 — a nearly 30% bump. During last week’s school committee meeting, Monárrez said the raise will help the district respond to a shortage of substitute teachers.
“Our staff, our principals and most importantly our scholars deserve to have substitutes who show up and who are of the highest caliber,” Monárrez said. “If I’m ... subbing and I’m thinking about going into teaching, I’m going to go to the district that pays the most.”
Worcester’s school district has incrementally raised substitute teacher pay by $5 over the past few years, according to School Committee Member Tracy O'Connell Novick. Despite those increases, the district still lagged behind others across the state in pay for subs.
Monárrez said the new, higher wage raise will help Worcester close the gap with other districts. The city will cover the pay increase using federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.
The substitute shortage is not unique to Massachusetts’ second-largest city. School district officials across the country say their substitutes have quit during the pandemic amid fears of contracting COVID-19 and have taken advantage of the strong labor market to find better-paying jobs in other fields. Boston’s former superintendent Brenda Cassellius even substitute-taught herself in January amid the omicron surge.
In Worcester, the shortage has forced schools to pull special education assistants away from their students to cover for absent full-time teachers. Another option has involved temporarily combining different classes until a teacher returns.
“That’s hard for both the teacher and student,” O’Connell Novick told GBH News. “You may well end up in a classroom that isn’t actually teaching whatever it is that you’re supposed to be learning. So you can end up with days that you’re not necessarily getting content. I know that’s happened with my own kids.”
Last year, the district averaged 120 combined teacher absences each day. Officials say they plan to hire more substitutes to meet that need going forward.
