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Date: 11/7/2023
LUDLOW — The School Committee approved an increased in pay for substitute teachers during its Oct. 24 meeting.
After meeting and working with the administrative team and finance subcommittee, Superintendent Frank Tiano proposed his recommendations to the School Committee to deal with the current shortage of substitute teachers.
The approved recommendations include increasing the pay from $90 to $115 a day.
Those with a bachelor’s degree will receive $120 a day and $135 a day for certified or retired teachers.
“Long story short, there is staffing shortage in our field. It’s from psychologists to teachers to paraprofessionals to substitutes. Our substitutes we do have a shortage,” Tiano said. “We did an analysis on what other districts pay their subs; we are literally competing with other districts now where in the past we had our own staff who were eager to earn some money with Ludlow public schools.”
According to the analysis, Ludlow ranked toward the bottom of the list, but the change would put only two schools ranked higher than them in terms of substitute teacher pay.
Tiano added, “We looked at the average and $115 put us in the high end of the average. In other words, we are higher than all but two on our list.”
In terms of paying for this increase, Tiano said it will ultimately help save money.
“When we have a shortage of subs, we unfortunately have to use our existing teachers or existing paraprofessionals. When we do that number one not a good practice but you need someone in the classroom and when we have our paraprofessionals, not best practice, you pull them away from their assignment we might have to adjust other peoples assignments to support the students,” Tiano added.
He continued, “We are paying our paraprofessionals per contract $26 an hour with a cap of $90 so on top of their regular pay that they would receive money for each period that they cover. Teachers, it would be $35 an hour ... to have that person come in is less expensive than for a teacher to do that for $35 for five periods.”
After budgeting $255,00 for substitute teachers, Ludlow schools paid $321,000.
Of the funds spent on substitute teachers, there was $161,000 put toward day substitutes and another $160,000 on internal staff.
Tiano said, “They are working and that is part of the contract and so forth, but we are getting less service for that same amount of money and so we would like to reduce utilizing our staff so that they can have their planning periods that they need to support our students.”
The Ludlow school department will also update their advertising for substitute teachers, according to Tiano.
“Substitute teachers by the market don’t get paid a whole lot, but my understanding is we have had some great ones in the past and we have lost some to other districts,” Tiano said.
School Committee member Joao Dias asked if Tiano noticed a problem with getting any of the current substitute teachers and if he is confident the increased pay will help solve the problem.
Tiano responded, “The substitute teachers we have are regular subs and they come in, but we just don’t have number to cover all the empty slots on a given day. We are a desirable district to come to, I believe. I am not sure this will bring people in, but I know this is an issue for us.”
The School Committee will meet again on Nov. 14.