Lack of subs growing at career center
Local school boards are going to have to address a growing lack of substitute employees in both teaching and nonteaching areas possibly before the 2018-19 school year. Members of the Ashland County West Holmes Career Center’s board of education discussed the shortage at the board’s regular meeting on Feb. 15.
The issue came up when Hillsdale School District representative Jason Chio reported during the associate school update portion of the meeting that Hillsdale is buying a pair of 84-passenger buses that officials hope will alleviate some current transportation problems.
“We’re doing a lot of [bus] route consolidation because of the lack of bus drivers,” he explained. “One driver calls in sick, and that throws the whole thing into turmoil. We’re hoping that going with higher capacity buses will help alleviate some of that.”
Forrest Chanay, who represents the Tri-County Educational Service Center, said Ashland and most other area school districts also are having problems hiring substitutes in all areas, not just bus drivers and cafeteria workers. He told the board that their home districts need to address the fact that other companies and businesses that are competing for employees have raised their pay rates.
“We need to consider what we ought to be paying — even substitute teachers — and some of the job descriptions and supports need to be updated to attract people,” Chanay said. “It’s a subject that needs to be addressed before the next school term.”
On a separate issue, Chio said Hillsdale Superintendent Steve Dickerson will hold a special forum before the board’s regular March 13 meeting to outline what the tax dollars from the Rover pipeline will mean for the district.
“We still won’t know the actual dollars until around Oct. 1, but it’s starting to get around,” he said. “The caution is ‘wait until the state finds out and takes the money back somehow.’”
Mike Parry, career center superintendent, recapped his experience at a recent three-day Ohio Educational Technology Conference. He said vendors indicated the newest trend is digital display technology replacing projectors and smart boards in the classroom.
“They’re now promoting these humongous TVs, 75- and 85-inch televisions,” Parry said. “The advantage of these is higher resolution and that it is just one device to break instead of two devices.”
The board also held a public hearing on a proposed school calendar for the 2018-19 school year. The only significant change was to move parent-teacher conferences up two weeks to avoid conflicts with community Trick-or-Treat nights and the October board meeting.
“The calendar mirrors this year’s calendar and is pretty much in line with Ashland and Hillsdale, which include many of our students,” school principal Rod Cheyney said.
A vote to adopt the school calendar is scheduled for the career center board’s March meeting.