The Cumberland County Board of Education made its first big change for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year Tuesday as board members unanimously voted to begin using a private company to find and hire substitute teachers.
The change was approved as part of the board’s consent agenda, so it garnered no discussion Tuesday, but school officials explained at a May 30 Personnel Committee meeting why the switch was necessary.
According to a presentation given by Associate Superintendent of Human Resources Ruben Reyes, the school system gets an average of 330 substitute requests daily, though Mondays and Fridays can spike to over 600 requests. Those were demands the system couldn’t meet, with the current substitute fill rate hovering around 68%. The fill rate is how many requests for substitutes were filled by substitute teachers.
“So roughly two-thirds we’re filling, the other third we’re not,” Reyes said during the May 30 meeting. “For those of you guys who have been in schools, you understand that if you can’t find a substitute, that kind of throws everything all out of whack, for lack of a better term.”
That fill rate was better before the Covid-19 pandemic at 92%, Reyes said, noting that there was slightly less demand for substitutes during that time. The school system has offered incentives since the return to in-person learning, like bonuses up to $400 per month based on the number of substitute jobs completed. But these didn’t work, he told committee members.
“From a district perspective, I want to focus more on the schools,” Reyes said.
That’s where the Knoxville, Tennessee-based education personnel and management company ESS comes in. ESS, which Reyes said has worked in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County and Union County school systems, will handle finding substitutes to fill requests and take the burden of paying them off system employees, according to Reyes’ presentation.
All substitutes currently employed by the school system will have the option to work for ESS without needing to reapply, Reyes said. Those who do will get a $50 gift card from a local business, according to his presentation.
In addition to weekly pay for jobs filled, ESS will also provide health, vision, dental and life insurance and a 401K, Reyes’ presentation states.
Reyes estimated the cost of the contract to be around $6.8 million — roughly $643,000 more than what it would have cost the school system in fiscal year 2022-23 to fill all substitute jobs — but emphasized that it was more important to fill substitute requests than save that amount.
“The other non-monetized costs that are important to consider are the impact of not having a substitute in place on school operations, impact on teacher stress/burnout, and impact on teaching and learning,” Reyes’ presentation said.
The contract with ESS will run through May 25, 2025, and automatically renew on a yearly basis up to four years, according to the draft contract. Reyes said he hopes to make the transition by July 1 so year-round schools can benefit.
In other business:
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda a $58,517 contract with A3 Communications to purchase two handheld metal detectors for each school in the county. These detectors will be used to determine if a weapon is indeed present if someone sets off a school’s new weapons detection system, Assistant Superintendent of Auxiliary Services Kevin Coleman said last month.
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda a $502,195 contract with Diamond Constructors to resurface Westover High School’s tennis court.
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda bringing a women’s lacrosse club team to Gray’s Creek High School and men’s and women’s lacrosse club teams to South View High School.
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda replacing pep squad programs at its middle schools with cheerleading teams. The teams will only cheer at home basketball and football games due to transportation constraints, Student Activities Director Chad Barbour said.
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda providing middle school athletic directors with a $1,500 supplement.
- The board unanimously approved as part of its consent agenda a $1.1 million contract with the Cumberland County Dept. of Public Health to hire 14 school nurses for the upcoming school year. That represents a $32,214 increase from the previous year’s contract with the department due to salary increases for those nurses, Director of Health Services Shirley Bolden said.
Board member Greg West was not present Tuesday. The board went into closed session for 39 minutes to discuss matters deemed confidential under state law and matters related to attorney-client privilege, but took no action upon returning.
The board will next meet at 6 p.m. Aug. 13 at the Central Services Building at 2465 Gillespie St.
Reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at lsolomon@cityviewnc.com or 910-423-6500.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.
Great job as usual. For years now, we as citizens have noticed something that we want to see if Cityview can provide some insight on. In regards to the board of education and the department of Public health and their nurses, why Is there an annual raise for them every year and not other employees? We get the demand but it seems as if these annual raises for school nurses always “Slides under the radar” and never gets talked about when discussing raises for other county employees or positions under great demand along with school nurse. . CV if you could find out why that is so directly From the superintendent, his health services director and the Director of our Health Department and/or assistant director, that would provide some transparency for us the general public as I am sure there are other other positions that may have high turnover or whatever the reasons they provide for these annual raises, that are not well-known. Who knows, they themselves may have received increases that were not publicly made known, which I’m sure is probably the case. Your in-depth coverage, relationships with government officials, coupled with public records request, she easily answered these questions. This has to affect Countey morale and to give one particular group annual raises on our taxpayers dying, gives the appearance of being greatly inequitable. We are sure high school nurses do a great job, as do other and all of our county employees and so to always provide this one group annual raises seems greatly unfair and the public should be aware of this.
If Turnover or the inability to fill school nurse positions is the issue & so-called reason for annual raises, then it may be time to do exactly what the Board of Education did and consider contracting school nurses instead of giving them these raises every year while I am sure, many county employees look on with this may as we are doing so as regular citizens.
thanks again Cityview for your great reporting That is precise and gives us, the general public, an inside view of what’s going on within or great county.