Substitute teacher cuts save Kennewick schools $720,000 in health insurance costs

Kennewick school leaders are sticking with their new restrictions on substitute teachers.

Just over a month ago the district cut the number of days most substitutes can work so they could avoid paying about $720,000 in new health insurance benefits from an already squeezed budget.

District leaders sent a notice in late November saying the 150 to 170 substitutes are now required to work at least two days a month and no more than eight days. Then they watched to see if any problems developed in December.

For the most part, the district found substitutes willing and able to work, said Doug Christensen, the district’s associate superintendent of human resources. On average, the district needs about 80 to 100 substitutes each day.

There were days when the district had two or three positions that weren’t filled.

“That’s not anything new,” he said during a recent school board retreat. “If we had a day where there was a lot of sickness, maybe some extra training that were scheduled for that day, or a conference, (then all positions were not covered.) We had days that have gone uncovered in the past.”

The worst was eight to 10 spots without anyone able to fill in. On at least one of those days, there were 150 substitutes working.

When substitutes can’t be found, teachers or administrators fill in.

While Kennewick district officials say they’ve seen no major problems, the Kennewick Education Association remains critical of the district’s choice.

President Rob Woodford said the move pushes quality substitutes to find work in neighboring school districts.

“It has had and will continue to have negative effects on the Kennewick School District’s ability to provide quality education in classrooms,” Woodford said. “The KEA hopes the district will discontinue this policy.”

Christensen was not sure if the district had lost substitutes to Richland or Pasco, but he said people are concerned that it will happen.

Health insurance changes

The school district made the decision to cut hours to avoid paying for benefits to about 70 substitutes starting in 2020.

This comes after a state change that opened up health insurance to anyone who worked more than 630 hours a year, including substitutes. That breaks down to 17.5 hours a week across the school year.

The district planned for some of the additional insurance costs by trimming positions and moving more people to working full time.

Leaders are trying to manage that cost against a backdrop of lower than expected enrollment, and a decrease in the amount of property tax revenue it receives. The result was a projected $10 million deficit for the 2019-20 school year.

The district pulled $5 million from reserves and trimmed another $5 million from the budget to make up for the shortfall.

Each qualifying substitute would have cost the district $1,000 a month, for a total cost of about $720,000.

“Three-quarters of a million dollars is a big deal to us,” Christensen said. “If we were not looking at other things, and this wasn’t a big deal for us we probably wouldn’t be quite as concerned, but it is a significant piece.”

The district doesn’t have a way around paying that bill, he said. Even if an employee says they don’t want the benefits, the district is still obligated to pay into the system.

Substitute teacher alerts

Meanwhile the district has 150 to 170 substitutes signed up to work. Many of those weren’t able to find positions because the most aggressive substitutes received the work.

The district uses a computer program that sends out an alert when a position available. The substitutes are then able to sign up using their phones to work the day. A day of work earns $135.

With an impending health insurance bill on the horizon, the district leaders wanted to spread the work across more of the people signed up to work.

So they instituted a limit to get more substitutes into positions and a minimum to get substitutes who weren’t signing up to start, Christensen said.

“If you look for all subs to work a certain amount of hours, there is capacity for everyone to work. ... The way we were doing it where 170 people were signed up and 70 people getting to work isn’t really fair either,” he said. “Obviously there are some philosophical differences about whether that is something we should be trying to do.”

What happens next

The district hasn’t eliminated long-term substitutes, Christensen said. About 25 substitutes are filling in for people with long-term illnesses or out on maternity leave. There are another five or six that are available.

The district is paying benefits to the long-term substitutes.

For now, the district is going to look at whether they can schedule conferences and training so there aren’t a large number of teachers missing on a single day.

“Our ultimate goal is to put the best subs in front of our kids,” Christensen said. “There are a lot of factors and not a lot of win-wins.”

Other districts have reached out to Kennewick to see how their experiment is working, he said.

“I just say, ‘We don’t really know. We’re just working our way through it,’” he said.