Philadelphia has hired a search service to hire 5,000 substitutes.
“Whether you’re a recent college graduate looking to work your way into a full-time teaching position, a retired teacher interested in getting back in the classroom, or someone looking to make a positive contribution to the development of children, Source4Teachers has a place for you. We offer health insurance and other benefits including a 401(k) plan and opportnities for various bonuses. Plus, working as a substitute is extremely flexible –how frequently, when and where you work is entirely up to you,” the SubinPhilly.com website says.”
This could happen only in a district that doesn’t care about education or children. This could happen only in a district that serves poor Black and Hispanic children. It would never happen in a ritzy white suburb.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is becoming a horror show. Who will teach under these circumstances?
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Philadelphia is really “sub-par” now.
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Philadelphia • The City of Brotherly Substitutes*
*May not contain any actual brotherliness.
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The privatized substitutes will make half of what substitutes made in Philadelphia last June. In this Philadelphia Inquirer story, “Looking for a few thousand substitute teachers” the owner of Source4Teachers Owen Murphy said, “”I think we’re getting back to a more reasonable pay structure, that we’re getting to a point where we’re paying market rate, and I think people can appreciate that,” Murphy said. “A lot of these teachers are not in it for the money. They find themselves missing teaching, and have caught up on all the books they want to read, and now they crave being back in the classroom.”
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20150831_Looking_for_a_few_thousand_substitute_teachers.html#ZquBazdsK3vqttdw.99
This is what a Philadelphia substitute teacher thinks about the new regime.
“Cutting Substitutes Pay For an Alleged Substitute Teacher Shortage?”
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UNBELIEVABLY HORRIFIC!
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FOR PROFIT EDUCATION … SIC.
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I am trying to understand what the concern is here.
The district used to pay uncertified substitutes $126.76 per day, certified substitutes $160.10 per day and provided no healthcare or retirement benefits. Source4Teachers pays uncertified substitutes between $75 and $90 a day and certified substitutes between $90 and $110 a day and provides healthcare and retirement benefits.
Without knowing the nature of those benefits and the situation of the substitute teacher (do they have a spouse with family health insurance coverage, for example), it is hard to say that total compensation is lower with Source4teachers than under the old district plan.
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Health care and retirement benefits for “sometime” “part time” workers? Call the place and see how that work, T.E., and get back to me.
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Donna,
The district offered nothing. Before declaring Armageddon in Philadelphia, perhaps you should find out how the benefits work. Do you have any idea how good or how bad they are?
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Yeah, retirement benefits – that’s a great one. Don’t you usually have to be employed for 6 months to a year before you’re eligible to join the 401(k) at any company?
And I’m sure those health benefits come with a cadillac plan. *cough, cough*
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Your right, we don’t have all the facts. But I’ll bet you that most of the substitutes are losing money and the private company is reaping the benefits.
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I wonder how much the health coverage premiums are. I’ll bet that would take a chunk of change from a substitute position that pays so little.
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So how will building personnel identify who belongs in the building with a rotating cast of subs? And with subs only working infrequently in any one building, no one will be able to spot misconduct because no administrator is going to pursue disciplining someone they may never see again.
This is begging for trouble with putting people inexperienced with working with large groups of high need youth in buildings with little oversight or even caring about their training – just warm bodies.
What could go wrong?
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It happens in Utah all the time. Substituting pays so poorly ($70.00 for a full day) that no one wants the job. The requirements are only a high school diploma. Most of our substitutes are recent high school graduates or elderly. Last year, a substitute fell asleep in my class. At least one of our substitutes is 85.
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The problem in Philadelphia now is that even with a higher rate of pay the district has a chronic sub shortage. How do they expect this to work? Who knows, maybe they know what they’re doing, but to me it looks like an accident waiting to happen.
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I hear you. Last spring, the sub across the hall told all the students “I am not calling roll”
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How about substitutes throughout the public sector, firefighters, police officers, water and sewer infrastructure, temps in all of the courts and jails, add your own favorites to the list. Philadelphia is the new Detroit?
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I dunno, I’ve always wanted to be a substitute banker. I doubt I could screw it up too much more than the actual ones do.
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How about a substitute Wall Street CEO? hahaha
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There used to be a Chicago Sun-Times columnist (“Quick Takes”) who collected odd blurbs on a variety of topics. One of his running gigs was about CEOs who ran their company into the ground and bailed out with tens or hundreds of millions. He had a running offer to run any company into the ground for only one million. Oddly, no one ever took him up on it.
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Or howzabout working as a substitute teachingeconomist, Dienne?
The ones lurking around here seem incapable of reasoned or honest debate.
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Michael,
Please deal free to point out any logical flaws in my posts or when you somehow devine that I am not being honest.
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Exactly! The teaching profession is increasingly being touted as something to try out for a few years while you look for a “real job”. People wouldn’t stand for this in other professions.
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That’s why they have the test as the standard. It takes kids away from critical thinking and takes their profession away from teachers. They believe anyone can teach to the test.
However, beginning with the Collins Sanders amendment to ESEA (www,wholechildreform.com) and much more creative thinking, teachers can take back their profession and kids can start learning again. That requires innovation, meaning having teachers that can find the way kids learn best. And that takes fully certified teachers prepared for their profession
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Unleashing the free market on education will destroy education for the poor. The free market is survival of the fittest.
Note to TFA, free market solutions and helping the poor do not go together.
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The “free market” allows corporations to increase consumer costs in energy, water, sewers and education. When you add in advertising, decreased efficiency and profit, we are paying more!
http://www.projectcensored.org/privatization-of-free-market-industry-costs-billions-more-than-public-services/
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I just looked at the hiring website, curiously. I am retired and sub on occasion for $75 a day (which is 10 bucks higher than nonlicensed subs are paid). I have no benefits at all. So, found no amount of pay given, just a chart indicating that there are some benefits but no reference to per diem or per hour payment. I live in Indiana so have no intention of applying for this but would like to know what they intend to pay. Also, saw that they are accepting applications for substitute psychologist, librarian and principal. This really seems like a peculiar situation….given the number of teachers is in the thousands. Very sketchy sounding to my ears. Seems like a way to get around contract agreements or some other weird scheme.
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Someone please tell me WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO WITH 5000 SUBS??? I too sub, because I cannot get a job with 9 years experience… Too expensive…. $70 a day no benefits. Gas money. I’m drowning, this is my 4th school year without employment.
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As a former Philadelphia teacher who started as a sub, I can tell you that the bargain isn’t worth it now that they’ve farmed sub services out to a private company. They’ve cut the pay significantly (from $160/day as a certified sub to $90/day) and if you think the “benefits” being offered are worth the paper they’re written on, then I have a nice bridge over the Delaware I’d like to sell you. They’ve basically gutted one of the supports of the PFT as another way of attacking the union and cut off one of the ways that teachers were recruited into the district. This is just another step in the plan to eventually privatize the entire district.
The problem is that they actually do need about 5000 subs, but the district had stopped accepting new subs on the rolls (including retired district teachers) about two years ago, which is why district sub services couldn’t fill all the vacancies that they had last year (they covered about 60% of all sub requests). The company that’s been hired now claims they can fill 90% of requests, but they currently have only a little over 1000 subs on their books to do so, which in a system with over 10,000 teachers just isn’t enough to do the job. That’s why the big recruiting push, but it’s doomed to failure, since you can earn almost as much in Philly working retail as what they want to pay subs. It’s a “cost-saving” measure that’s going to work about as well as all these “it’s cheaper to privatize it” ideas always do…very poorly.
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It sounds like another exploitative privatization move where all the money is at the top while a few crumbs fall to the bottom. This is one reason why wages are not increasing.
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If the kids don’t count, their teachers don’t count. Contingent instant hires are fine for kids deemed throwaways….disgraceful.
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I can see the ed reform plan to get excellent teachers in every school is going well.
Can we all look forward to a giant contract temp force in our local public schools? This “movement” just keeps getting better and better, I must say. Maybe we could reallocate some of the money we’re spending on measuring teachers to hiring some.
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Yep. Reform has always seemed like it has a lot of opportunity for people avoiding actually teaching.
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Chiara, I, for one, will be thrilled when they outsource teaching economist’s job to a low paid temp PhD from another country who is willing to do what he/she calls work for peanuts to the dollar.I want to hear how wonderful an opportunity that will be and how it is not an hysterical cry of Armageddon when his special kiddos have to go on a big budget for their college educations like ours do.
My school has been in session for 8 days. We have half a dozen long term subs filling positions that will not be filled by certified teachers due to lack of funding and a shortage of applicants.
Quite clever, really. Hire someone at a drastically lower rate of pay, offer few, if any, perquisites, deny them collective bargaining rights, exempt them from the most onerous reforms, such as VAM, and, voila! you have created a cheap, easily exploited labor force that replaces an entire profession for just pennies.
The dream of all Friedman and Rand disiciples! The unions are decimated. The cost of schooling is reduced. Just a few of the ‘right kind’ of people get to make lots of profit, What’s not for an economist to love?
Our brave new world, dystopic, but money is there to be made!
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Chris,
As a non tenure stream faculty, I am the low cost economics Ph. D. I thank you for the support.
My tenure stream colleges come from every content in the world. Most earn more than I do. Some triple my earnings.
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This could happen only in a district that doesn’t care about education or children. This could happen only in a district that serves poor Black and Hispanic children. It would never happen in a ritzy white suburb.
100% correct Diane, so very sad
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Wait, what? What exactly do you mean by “a district that doesn’t care about education or children”? Who, specifically, in such alleged district are you talking about?
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I saw a billboard in Michigan advertising for substitute teachers. I hope this isn’t some bait and switch where they quietly replace real employees with the cheap labor contract model that is all the rage in the private sector. I wouldn’t put it past them.
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This isn’t politically correct but looking for your thoughts. What if full public schools, union and all, entered into a charter agreement with their school board. Then they couldn’t be closed and their only restrictions are what they write in the charter. Public schools have been sabotaged, once we make an agreement it can’t be touched. Sorta what goes around, comes around
Your thoughts
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I’ve thought something similar, Cap. Hell if the state threatens take over, one might as well beat them to the punch and form one’s own “District CharterSchool” and go from there. No/very few regulations, can spend money however they want and depending on the state, maybe no testing or better yet grading your own tests.
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Actually they would still have to be accountable to the school board but anything is possible especially with Collins Sanders
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And that would be okay because it allows the community some say in public school matters.
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I actually gave this a few minutes thought but found my friend, a principal in a small–district authorized charter, drowning in repeated lawsuits and remembered why I had chosen not to use my administrative credential. And to top it off, she doesn’t get the big bucks of the private developers.
At my age, life is too short. It’s a young person’s game today.
The school in which I taught for the last 15 years before I retired kept trying to become an authorized charter. Now I wonder how long before it is appropriated by Broad. Those who opposed the old teachers on this maneuver may soon regret not doing it.
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My bright idea for providing subs at minimal cost to school corporation is to require all elected officials in a district, including state reps and senators to serve as subs in the schools in their districts (if they can fulfill the minimum education qualifications and pass the criminal history check). Sort of like jury duty is arranged, they would get called randomly and have to do it whether or not its convenient to their lives. My next door neighbor was not able to get out of jury duty years ago due to breast feeding her baby. Fortunately she was able to work out situation during which her mom could take the baby to court and she got to nurse there and the trial was quick. So, even during legislative sessions I would declare that they have to go if called. And like jury duty, they could donate their payment for the day back to the school if their employment agreement covers it as paid day off.
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I like your thinking.
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Well, but then again, you might get too many incidents like this: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/01/gop_congressman_forced_to_apologize_for_upsetting_elementary_students_with_talk_of_suicide_bombers/
I think random people hired off the streets might be better qualified than the average politician.
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Parents may want to opt their children out of exposure to some of them. Probably would be wise to monitor certain personalities closely. I can think of several who should not be in close contact with children. And I can think of several that I’d like to see do hours of cafeteria duty.
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C, This is a great idea! In NJ, we can put the Grandfathered double dippers–both mayor & state representative–at top of list. Also our many elected county sheriffs who collect salary & retired police dept pension.
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Let them hire the temps. Then let the temps organize and join the union. Make sure the union helps the terms sue the district for full benefits (no risky 401k’s), a living wage and contractual permanence. Or, gurantee the litigation from the outset to convince the district not to hire an army of temps in place of hiring permanent workers with contracts.
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…temps sue the district…
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I just suggested my son’s friend apply to be a sustute teacher in Las. Vegas. He was fired by Macy’s for inadvertently taking back an item that had had a tag changed by a customer frauding the store . Only mistake in a year. But I think he could substitute teach in the new economy. The district would not lose any money and would save from not actually having someone with any experience. Oh, he does have quite a few nieces and nephews. That might disqualify him.
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And when the children fail to achieve at high levels, will it be the fault of “the union?”
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I bet they will use many of these “substitutes” as full time teachers at non teacher pay. They will justify this policy by saying there are no certified teachers available to fill the spots.
I’m not clairvoyant, I’ve just seen this happen too many times before (in many different school districts).
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As a parent and an educator I would object to the “sign on the dotted line” recruitment of the masses for substitute teachers. It’s just plain scary. Children deserve better.
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Yes they do.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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I am not sure about the rest of the country, but here in Southeastern PA, we have had outsourced substitutes for a long time. I even worked for one such service about 8 years ago (not the one hired by Philly). It wasn’t bad but the pay was lower than what districts were offering. As a Philly teacher, I’m not so much offended by the idea of outsourcing our subs as much as I am by the reasons why we need to do so and how the district has going about doing it. This is a manufactured “crisis” caused by an underfunded district purposely preventing experienced, retired employees from substituting. We start school next Tuesday. We’ll see how many of our long-term subs spots get filled by then by this company (but I’m not holding my breath).
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