Sub pay hits board agenda

Substitute teachers with college degrees in the Mat-Su Borough School District receive the same pay as those with just high school diplomas -- $9 per hour. That number hasn't changed in more than a decade, and at least one substitute teacher is calling it a travesty.

Bishop Buckle has been a substitute teacher in Mat-Su schools for the past four years. He has a degree and is retired from the Department of the Interior. If it was about the paycheck, he says, he wouldn't be working as a sub.

"I can make more money making whirligigs," Buckle said of his home business. "I'm doing this teaching, at nine bucks an hour, for grins, to get out of the house . . . Money is not an issue with me, but what is hurting me is that kids are missing out."

Buckle contends that the Mat-Su Borough School District is losing educated, valuable substitute teachers to Anchorage simply because the pay is higher there. Last month, Buckle took his argument to the Mat-Su school board, and in response members asked for a report from the district administration.

According to the report, Anchorage requires all substitutes to have college degrees, and pays them $13 per hour, $16 after 20 days. Mat-Su, in contrast, only requires a high school diploma and does not pay substitute teachers with college degrees any more than those without. Mat-Su substitutes with teaching certificates receive roughly $13 per hour, $23 for long-term employees.

Buckle says he knows of elderly Valley residents who have college degrees, but are not certified teachers, who drive to Anchorage to substitute teach.

"It gets back to the simple arithmetic that it pays to drive to Anchorage to make an extra $50 a day," Buckle told the Frontiersman last week.

The Mat-Su school board has to do some arithmetic of its own, however. The district does not have numbers on how many of the nearly 700 substitute teachers on its payroll have college degrees but no teaching certificates. Estimating there are 200, however, the administration reported that it would cost nearly $70,000 to give them a raise to $13 per hour, like Anchorage. At $16 per hour, the final tally is more than $110,000.

"Definitely it will boil down to what the priorities are for the board," said Kim Floyd, information specialist for the Mat-Su Borough School District. The school board last month approved this year's substitute teacher pay rates. Long-term, certified subs received a slight increase from $22.84 to $23.52 an hour, but pay for those without certificates remained at $9 per hour.

Since Buckle's testimony and subsequent report from the administration, the board scheduled a discussion on the issue for tomorrow night's work session, but as of last week no action item had been placed on any future agendas.

"We're not recommending anything to the board," Floyd said of central administration. "We're waiting for the board to give us direction."

It remains unclear what that direction will be.

"I think we're kind of looking at everything . . . the big picture," board president Dan Contini told the Frontiersman. "There are several other items that need attention as well."

Contini said he expects the topic of substitute teacher pay to come up at the work session, but he said the board will have to decide which needs are the greatest.

Rising utility and health-insurance costs are among the items the board will be keeping an eye on during this school year. At the same time, both classified and certified employee contracts are up this year, which could put a further draw on the district's bank account.

"It's not all about money, but it seems like there is always a critical need that could be addressed if we had more," Floyd said.

At the same time, Floyd said the district wants to be fair and make substitute teachers feel like valued employees.

"We need them very much," she said.

With the nation facing a teacher shortage, Floyd said the importance of substitute teachers is only increasing. While she said Mat-Su does not have a large enough pool of applicants to restrict substitutes to only those with college degrees, as Anchorage does, she suggested that perhaps people with degrees could be enticed into the profession by first working as a substitute.

"That again, we would hope, could feed into our recruitment pool . . . they might be interested in doing a one-year program to get their certifications," Floyd said. "But the bottom line is that it comes down to the money . . . it would have to come from somewhere."

Buckle said he hopes the board will eventually reconsider the pay situation. In the meantime, however, he says students are the ones who are suffering.

"I have been watching the list of qualified subs growing shorter and shorter," Buckle said. "The school district will get what it pays for."