Teachers on Call, the company that the Shawano School District has used to recruit and hire substitute teachers and staff, has merged with Kelly Education. A representative of the new company spoke to the Shawano School Board on Sept. 22 about what will stay the same and what will change in terms of substitute services.
Sara Norman Barto, Kelly’s representative for the district, had served with Teachers on Call for three years and noted that her new company has a large call center that will be used to field Shawano’s calls, along with calls from 40 states.
“They answer calls from 5:30 (a.m.) Eastern Time to 7:30 (p.m.) Eastern Time,” Barto said. “There is also a live chat feature with an increased number of people that can help your subs if they have any questions.”
The questions that the call center can answer include payroll, pay stubs, scheduling and more. Barto noted that call wait times are long, but the company is working on that, and that’s where the live chat feature comes into play.
Another change from Kelly will be that paraprofessionals will receive hourly pay. Barto said that, under Teachers on Call, aides were paid in four-hour blocks of time, even if they only worked one or two hours. So the new system is expected to save the district some money.
“Now, all non-instructional employees are paid the exact time that they work,” Barto said. “If they come in for an hour and cover a library position, lunch monitor, anything like that, you can schedule a para and we would just pay them the exact time they worked.”
Kelly only charges the district for the positions it fills. Barto noted that substitute teachers get $150 per day, of which Kelly claims 30%.
In the last year, Teachers on Call was able to fill 75% of the positions the district needed filled. For teachers, the district was able to fill 86% of requests, but for paraprofessionals, the company only filled 31% of positions. Barto said she would like to see Kelly reach a benchmark of 60% for the paraprofessionals.
Of more than 3,500 callouts over the course of the year, 1,279 of them were given with less than 12 hours notice — in many cases due to illness — making it difficult to fill those positions, according to Barto. In that timeframe, only 53% of the requests for substitutes were filled, she said.
Substitutes could get training through Teachers on Call, and they’ll continue to do so through Kelly.
“Kelly just offers more professional growth courses,” Barto said. “They can choose to continue their professional development online with more courses, like diversity and inclusion, classroom management, some of the basics.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
