Benefits of Finding the Best Substitute with Curtis Updike

Tyler Podcast Episode 72, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, join host Jeff Harrell as he sits down with the  guest Curtis Updike, a former teacher and school staffing professional. Get ready to dive deep into the intricacies of finding suitable substitutes for teachers, aides, and principals when they need to be absent from school. Curtis brings his wealth of experience and expertise to the table, shedding light on the often-overlooked challenges of matching the right individuals to specific school staffing positions. Tune in to gain a better understanding of the benefits parents, students, substitutes, and school staff get with a technology solution that actually finds the best fit for the school.   Whether you're an educator, a school administrator, or simply curious about the inner workings of the education system, this episode offers invaluable insights into the often under-appreciated art of school staff substitution.

Transcript

Curtis Updike: I had my favorite substitutes. I knew the ones that did well in my classroom, that had the training, that I've worked with before. I wanted them. "So, can you prioritize them when I'm out?" It's going to make sure it goes to them first, even if I don't have time to contact them.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Tech Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing here at Tyler, and I appreciate you joining me. Well, what happens when teachers, aides, or principals need to be out and they need substitutes and they need to have quality substitutes to take care of their school or classroom? Well, that's the topic that we are talking about today. You hear a lot of headlines about teacher shortages, bus driver shortages, and the like. Well, we're going to talk about that with subject matter expert, Curtis Updike, of Tyler Technologies. You're going to really enjoy this conversation. Here's my conversation with Curtis Updike. Well, now joining us on the Tyler Tech Podcast is Curtis Updike. Curtis, welcome to the show.

Curtis Updike: Well, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Jeff Harrell: Excited to talk to you back to school, believe it or not, is not so far away. It feels like we just entered summer, but now we're thinking about back to school a little bit. And we're going to talk a lot about that. But I would love for our listeners to get to know you a little bit. Tell us about your background.

Curtis Updike: Oh, wow. I come from a whole lot of places. So, let's start with, I used to be a teacher. I taught high school language arts and drama. Prior to my education world, I worked in different business aspects, logistics and business things. But, I wanted to teach. I've always wanted to teach. So I started there, which led me into having knowledge that was useful in other places. So, from that, I moved into the business office at the school. Which said, "We like your teaching, but we also need people here. We need things done." So, I ended up there, which then led me into finding holes that were needed in the schools.

From being in the classroom, I saw that there was holes that from an administrative aspect needed to be filled. So, that led me into the business office, which then said, "I need to create something different." So I actually opened my own staffing agency to help fill the holes of what was, when I was teaching, when I needed a substitute teacher, which cascaded into, "Well, what is the software I can use to do this?" And, when I left the staffing, I ended up with software specifically trying to make it work for what we needed. So, long way around, that dropped me here at Tyler.

Jeff Harrell: I love it. Yeah, you're the perfect person to talk to about this, because we hear a lot in the news about shortages, teachers, school bus drivers, et cetera. I would love for you to help us understand that landscape. Talk a little bit about the landscape in school staffing right now and the things that you're seeing.

Curtis Updike: Nationally, we have an employment shortage. I mean, it's not just in schools, but it's across the board. But it affects schools more dramatically, simply because there's a level of training that's required. Obviously, for teachers' education. And it takes time to get these teachers educated. It takes time to get them there. Even with bus drivers, not everybody can drive a bus, right? You've got to get a CDO, you've got to get the right training. And so, it takes more time to be able to get into those situations or into those positions.

So, the situation the schools are in is they don't have the ability to hire an Amazon driver, right? Uber drivers can't be school people. So, it's affecting the education abilities within the schools. It's affecting manpower with things transitioning, different regulations coming down, and trying to find the right matches when and where needed. It's causing strain.

Jeff Harrell: You bring up a good point. I hadn't thought about. So my son is home from college. And he is a DoorDash driver. And, he is an 18-year-old kid with a license, but he's able to deliver food. Certainly not qualified to deliver children safely home from school. So, I never thought about it that way. But you're exactly right. You have to have the right person doing the right role, have that training and that safety element for our students as well. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the problems when you don't find the right match, because I can imagine, there's probably solutions out there that'll maybe find someone that can fill a gap for you.

Curtis Updike: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Harrell: But when that gap is filled with the wrong match, talk to us a little bit about the problems that creates.

Curtis Updike: Well, first of all, we're going to go all the way back to the software configuration to begin with. When you're looking at the software itself, we need to make sure that it can handle more than just teachers. I know when we think schools, we think teacher. I mean, the first two that come in your mind, teacher and bus driver. Those are the two that everyone sees, right? Schools are like many cities. They have food service, they have custodial, they have maintenance, they have principals, they have this whole infrastructure that has to be supplied. And, when one of those people is out, most of them need a replacement. A teacher, you can't not have someone in the classroom. So, can the software, first of all, manage all of those different roles? Some of them can. Some of them can't. When you look at the software, can it distinguish and say, it's designed just for teachers and that's great. That's where we're at. We looked at it saying, "We need to cover all of those roles."

So, we can't have someone that is a qualified bus driver show up as a principal that day. There's 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, what we call, classifications. Make sure that each of those is looking for the right people, that have the right training, that can go to the right position. Once we match those within the system, you have another level.

I taught language arts and drama. I had my favorite substitutes. I knew the ones that did well in my classroom, that had the training, that I've worked with before. I wanted them. "So, can you prioritize them?" When I'm out, it's going to make sure it goes to them first, even if I don't have time to contact them. So, I can go into my system, quick on my phone, on my computer and say, "I'm going to be gone tomorrow. I'm not feeling well." And it instantly knows who my favorite people are, who's qualified for the job, and can send a app ping, or a text message, or an email, or phone call, whatever, however you want to get notified of, they get the notification, they can accept the position, and the administration doesn't have to worry about who's out, who's in. It just happens. And they walk in the morning and like, "Oh, I've got 90 people in my school that aren't going to be here today, but they're all covered."

Then we take it above and beyond that, where from the administration side, when you look at the people and you say, "Great. I know this substitute. They work well in our building, but they may not work well working with second grade, or in wood shop." Something like that. So, they can go in and say, we have a granular control, "No, this substitute does not work well in that 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. So you have a lot of more control of where, making sure the right person's in the right place, so someone doesn't lose a finger, and the bunsen burners are turned off correctly in the classrooms so we don't burn the building down.

Jeff Harrell: Yes. Those are definitely problems we want to avoid, missing phalanges and burning buildings, for sure. And, we're Tyler Technologies, and we're speaking a little bit about one of the solutions to this problem, which is our absence and substitute product. But, based on your history, I'd love for you to go back a little bit in time, because you were a teacher, you were also in staffing. So before technology was available to help solve this problem, did you literally have to pick up the phone and find someone? Was it a paper system? What were some of the old systems before we get to this new technology that we have today?

Curtis Updike: Well, we'd like like to say it's an old system. But, some people are still doing it.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, that's true. Good point.

Curtis Updike: It's just a matter of, can we make it work? Yeah. You would have a list. And I remember doing this myself as I had a list of people that had been verified, qualified, and hired by the district who had their I9s, and their W4s, whatever filled out, were ready to go. And, I would get a call from a teacher or someone at 8 o'clock in the evening, 10 o'clock, "I'm not going to be there tomorrow." So, I walk over to my desk, I pull out this paper list, and I start making phone calls. That takes a lot of time. Your average phone call is three to five minutes, even if they don't pick up, just to leave a message, whatever it is we need to do. So, getting through that list took forever. And then, waiting for people to call back, waiting for them to, "Yes." "No." Maybe they're already working in another school that I wasn't aware of, because I couldn't tell.

So, so many holes. So many holes. Then I have to... Who was in? Sign them in, get them to payroll, what hours did they show up? What hours did they leave? Who was out? What were you out for? Were you out for sick time? Were you out for personal vacation? What was it? There's so many pieces in that that just got missed. Is it something that needs to be approved or not approved? When we look at the software itself, it knows all of that. The employee clicks a button, I'm gone. Knows who to look for. It's qualified. It tracks their hours, it tracks who showed up, when they showed up, when they left, what the leave reason was. We take the file, we integrate it to the payroll system, it's done. It even knows if that person's working in another school, or even another school district. Skip over them, move to somebody else. But we can literally go through a list of substitute potentials. We can hit a 100 to 150 people in a matter of two minutes, as opposed to three to five minutes to make one phone call.

Jeff Harrell: Love it. And, let's finish with this. I'd love to talk about the benefits for the different... Because we think about the benefits for the teacher that needs to be out, or the aide that needs to be out, or the worker, or the staffing person. But I'd also like to talk a little bit about the benefits to the school, benefits to the parents, and then benefits to the students as well. If you wouldn't mind maybe walking us through that. And let's start with the students. Based on a technology like this that could find the right match for whatever gap that they're trying to fill, what's the benefit to a student?

Curtis Updike: Well, that, obviously one of them. But, the big one that most people don't even realize is when a substitute is called and they say, "Great. I'll take the job to teach science in the middle school." They walk in the school in the morning, they check in at the front desk, they make it to the classroom, and sitting on that desk is a piece of paper it says, "Here's your lesson plans for the day." They now have about 15 minutes before the kids walk through the door to get prepared to figure out what they're teaching and how they're doing it. Most teachers have these planned out months in advance. Within the system, if the teacher is out, the moment the substitute picks up the job, the lesson plans are attached.

Jeff Harrell: Oh, wow.

Curtis Updike: So the night before, a week before, whenever the teacher put the absence in, they can be prepared before they even walk in the classroom.

Jeff Harrell: And then, what about for the parent? I mean, I think, I can make some assumptions on what the benefit is for the parent. But in your words, tell us a little bit about that.

Curtis Updike: Benefit for the parent? Your kid's not missing a day of education. I don't know how many times I have heard, "Oh yeah, the substitute came in and put in a movie." Because, they didn't know what was happening. They didn't know what was going on. We've missed a day of advancement. We're trying to make sure that we get the right person, with the right qualifications that can do the job, and knows what to do before they even walk in the door.

Jeff Harrell: And what about for the schools themselves? What are the benefits?

Curtis Updike: Oh, the schools themselves. The administrative time that's associated with tracking out your employee leave time, getting an absence approval. I have one school that I literally worked with last week, told me, "We still do what we call the pink sheet." It is a pink piece of paper, the employee fills it out, has a student run it to the office, it sits at the desk of the principal. The principal signs it saying, "Yes, your absence is approved." And then they have to start making phone calls. So, we don't know how long that whole process is going to take, right? That pink piece of paper could have slipped under the desk and got lost.

So, how about the moment the employee puts it in, the principal gets a notification, "This needs to be approved. Do you want to approve the absence?" They can approve it instantly. It can happen in a matter of seconds to minutes. And then, all of that data is tracked. So someone doesn't have to hand key all of that time into a payroll system of who worked, who was out, who was when. It takes literally days for someone to hand key all of that information for all the substitutes in the past two weeks for payroll, where we can actually export the file and upload it in a matter of a minute or two.

So, the amount of time saved on the administration, the amount of money saved. Going back to that scenario, when I said, when I pulled out my note out of my desk and made phone calls, I got bonus pay or stipend pay for making those phone calls for the extra hours in the morning and the evening, which I didn't want to do from home. So, I don't have to do that anymore. Nobody has to make that list. And, that stipend pay for many of the schools, that pay that is associated with those employees, taking that away from paying them the extra pay and all of this overtime and everything else, more than covers the cost of the software. So, they're saving money on the backend.

Jeff Harrell: And you've hit on many of the benefits for the staffing person that needs to be out. But, any other ones that we haven't talked about. And then also, the benefits for the person filling in. You mentioned already they're not getting a lesson plan 15 minutes before, but talk to us about the benefits for the person that needs to be out, and then the person that's actually filling that role.

Curtis Updike: Person that needs to be out, rest assured we're going to do the best possible way to get everything covered as quickly as possible. So they're not stressing about, "Do I have someone in my class? What's going to happen? Who's in there? I don't even know." They actually have access to the system if they didn't have even a favorite or nobody was available, they can see who's picked it up. The moment somebody picks it up, they get a notification that says, "Hey, Joan substitute just picked up your job." They can communicate with them. They can email them. They can phone call them and give them information directly if they need to. So, that employee knows that their classroom is being covered, or their position in the kitchen is being covered the right way at the right time.

From the substitute's perspective, they can see those absences. If employees know that they're going to be gone on vacation three months from now, they can put their absence in today, the substitute can pick up the job today, and plan out for the future when they're going to be working. So they don't have to wait until the last minute every day. I've got a lot of substitutes. They will literally plan two, three months in advance and have every day scheduled. They know where they're going, what they're doing. It's not guesswork anymore. It's not like the Uber driver waiting for their phone to ping. They know which restaurant they're picking up, and what food they're taking where, and they can map it out. So, it makes their life so much easier.

Jeff Harrell: I love it. I love when technology helps solve real problems. And, especially when it has to do with students. This is really fantastic. Well, Curtis, this has been great. Any final words and if you want to talk a little bit about Tyler's absence and substitute, maybe some of the differences between it and some other things that may be out there in the market?

Curtis Updike: There's other things out there that when you boil it all down, if you talk about a car, you put the key in, you start it and the car goes forward. Everything beyond that is bells and whistles, right? Does the horn work? Do I have airbags? Safety features? We wanted to make sure that we built the best, most efficient one possible. It's not a Lamborghini. I don't want you to pay for a Lamborghini. I've got the best family sedan out there. It does its job. It does it well. And it makes it comfortable. And, we want to make sure that it fits the purpose that it's there for it. We want to make sure that we can integrate it to any payroll system, not just ours. Tyler has its own payroll. But, so many other schools, they use a payroll from one school. They use our absence and substitute. We need to make sure that that data can pass. We don't want to make it difficult on them.

And then above and beyond that, within Tyler as a whole, there's a few of us that came from staffing agencies that I brought with me actually, that we put together a way for Tyler to help... No, we don't staff. We don't hire your staff, but there's things staffing agencies do. There's tricks of the trade that we made public for the school districts. They don't need to pay someone to do it. We just try to give them the information that allows them to find those staff that they need in the most efficient and less expensive way possible. Schools have budgets. They need to stay in the budget. So, we want to give them the tools. If you want to hire people and you want to know how staffing agencies do it, we'll give it to you, and you don't have to pay for it, it's there. We'll help you. We want to make sure that not only does the system work, but that you have everything you need to make it work.

 

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, I think one of the things we really like here at Tyler is to have people creating the software, working on the software, selling the software that have been in our client's shoes before. You've been there before. So, really appreciate your perspective and point of view. If someone wanted to learn more about Tyler's absence and substitute solution, how would they do that?

Curtis Updike: Go to Tyler's website and click on schools. Right? We're there. You could check absence and substitute search. Look for Tyler, we're there. Give us a call. We've got a handful of people here that really know their stuff. And, we're just happy to answer questions. So, I'll put my phone number on here if you want it, right?

Jeff Harrell: Well, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, Curtis, is there an email address or something you wanted to share?

Curtis Updike: Yeah, curtis.updike, U-P-D-I-K-E, @tylertech.com. That comes right to me and we're happy to share. We're happy to help.

Jeff Harrell: Very good. Well, this has been great, Curtis. I've certainly spent a lot of time in school, had no idea back however long that was, when I was going to school, that there would be solutions like this that would help solve the problem where I didn't have to watch that movie again when I had a substitute, but actually had a real lesson plan to go through. So this is fantastic. Thanks so much for joining the show. And, I'm sure we'll talk again very soon.

Curtis Updike: All right. Thank you.

Jeff Harrell: Making sure our students are well taken care of, such an important topic and really appreciate the great work that Curtis and the team are doing in this area. Hope you enjoyed that and hope you enjoy the Tyler Tech Podcast. We are working on episodes throughout the rest of 2023 and on into 2024, so please subscribe. This is Jeff Harrell, director of Content Marketing here at Tyler Technology, signing off. We'll talk to you soon.