Need a Substitute Teacher? Here's How Technology Can Help

Schools operate much like a city, with teachers of course, but also administrative staff, food service workers, janitors, and maintenance staff required to keep things humming. When one or more of these employees are sick or on vacation, who can fill in?

Many schools have systems in place to secure a substitute teacher or staff fill-in, but a surprising amount are still paper-based, manual processes, requiring lots of time and effort. Curtis Updike, a former teacher and school administrator, saw how these outdated systems affected schools, teachers, and students, and was inspired to start a school staffing agency. Updike now works for Tyler Technologies providing innovative solutions for schools in that same space.

In a recent podcast, Updike outlined four benefits of a modern school staffing solution.

1. Time Savings

A manual process — which many schools still use — is time-consuming and sometimes ineffectual, especially when compared to the advantages that a modern solution can offer. During his time as an administrator, Updike would work manually, making phone calls off of a list of substitutes. If a teacher notified him at 8 p.m. that they weren’t feeling well and wouldn’t be in the next day, Updike would pull out the list, start making calls, and leave messages without knowing if the list of substitutes were even available.

With a modern solution, the teacher or employee can enter their time off, and the system starts automatically working. It can track the teachers’ time off as well as the substitutes’ hours. It can filter out substitutes who have already accepted jobs at other schools for those dates as well.

“We can hit 100 to 150 people in a matter of two minutes, as opposed to three to five minutes to make one phone call,” Updike says.

2. Comprehensive Coverage

Schools need trained personnel: bus drivers, teachers, and administrators. But custodial, food service, or maintenance staff positions, while not as specialized, can be just as tough to replace on short notice. A comprehensive solution is best, that can identify and track fill-ins or replacements for all of the various positions in a school.

“Can the software, first of all, manage all of those different roles? Some of them can. Some of them can't,” Updike says. “We can't have someone that is a qualified bus driver show up as a principal that day. There are some legal issues that may go around there, as well as they're not qualified. So, the software has to be able to denote all of those different classifications.”

Hear More From School Business Expert Curtis Updike

In this podcast, Updike talks in detail about his time as a teacher and school administrator, and the benefits a modern technology solution brings to finding a good substitute.

3. Prioritization

When Updike taught, he had his favorite substitute teachers — those who knew his class, had a passion for the subject, and would ensure students kept learning while he was away. Modern solutions can automatically prioritize a teacher’s tagged favorites, even as far as sending a notification to the substitute the instant a teacher enters their time off in the system.

That puts less pressure on teachers and administrators, who can simply check the app to see if a sub has accepted the job, instead of making phone calls and leaving messages.

The automation can be expanded on the administrative side to allow certain people to be filtered for certain jobs only.

“Say this substitute does not work well in a position — we still want to keep them in our building, but we don't want them to work in wood shop, or whatever it is,” Updike says. “You have a lot more control of making sure the right person is in the right place.”

4. Wide-Ranging Benefits

All of these advantages help not just school administrators or teachers taking sick days, but they directly affect students, parents, and communities as a whole. It’s easier and more reliable for a solid pool of substitute teachers and staff to stay employed, and they have better resources to maximize their time.

Students don’t miss days of learning — say goodbye to substitutes just putting on a movie, Updike says — and their parents don’t have to worry about the quality of teaching their children receive when a teacher is out.

Communities benefit from the increased efficiency in their schools, who have quick, simple ways to ensure the best substitutes and staff are filling in. A modern solution saves money too, since administrators no longer have to take overtime to call potential substitute teachers and office staff don’t have to work through paper-based processing.