Human Resources
Improving Teacher Recruitment for Early Childhood Education
- By Brandy Sroga-Coons
- 11/01/19
It’s often said that the littlest learners need the biggest help. That’s certainly true when it comes to
the teacher shortage. Nowhere is the shortage more acute than
at the early childhood level, where licensure requirements are
higher, yet salaries are lower than K-12 teachers. But unlike
K-12 classrooms, early childhood centers that don’t meet the
state-mandated teacher-to-student ratios must close their doors
for the day or run out of compliance.
I began as director of Creative Kids Academy 21 years ago with
one location. Back then, teacher recruitment was not a concern.
But when the shortage kicked in, competition for qualified teachers,
substitute teachers and classroom aides increased. We reached
a tipping point when vacancies and last-minute teacher absences
threatened the very reason our centers exist: to teach. Through
a combination of leveraging our substitute teaching base to fill
full-time vacancies and outsourcing our entire substitute teaching
program, I have been able to ensure a quality teaching environment
at our centers, despite the shortage.
A Daily Part of Life
The impact of vacancies and same-day absences creates a
steady cycle of recruiting, screening and onboarding caring and
qualified early childhood educators — talented people who have
many other appealing employment options in the metropolitan
area. Over time, creating and maintaining a dependable pool of
teaching staff can become a 24-hour a day job.
It’s a challenge to find full-time teachers, which is why substitute
teachers play a major role in retention.
Connecting to Subs in Minutes
By 2010, as our enrollment continued to grow, I needed a
more comprehensive solution that we could share across all our
locations, so I outsourced the entire substitute program to a
teacher recruitment agency called Teachers On Call. This frees
up staff to focus on administration, filling full-time permanent
teacher vacancies and allows directors to spend more time with
our teachers. As a center, we can continue enrolling without
putting parents on a waitlist.
I start with a quality base of substitute teachers. Each school
year, I gear up for an estimated 1,500 teacher absences that will
happen across our 10 centers in the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas.
With substitute teachers, I get to meet all kinds of candidates
and see how they fit our culture, how they interact with
the kids, with parents and with other teachers. Once I find
someone who is uniquely devoted to early childhood education,
I hang on to them. I offer a Child Development Associate
(CDA) reimbursement to nurture our aides into becoming great
teachers.
Our centralized absence management system plays an important
role and takes away a significant amount of stress. All of
our locations share substitute opportunities across a network of
talent. As substitute positions are entered into the system, the
substitute pool can sign up immediately. The distribution list is
tailored so that the subs who request to work certain days and
times can see only the openings that match their availability.
Not only is this a more efficient way to reach a large pool of
hundreds of substitute teachers, but it helps us with retention.
Our substitute teachers don’t have to spend their precious free
time reviewing opportunities that won’t interest them, and our
permanent staff don’t have to worry about missing a day of work
without putting the rest of us at an inconvenience. Knowing
that my directors can post an opening at midnight and have it
filled by 5 a.m. keeps the directors from being in the classrooms
themselves. I don’t want our directors working too many hours
because then it trickles down. If I can keep a director out of a
classroom, it makes the time that they do spend with our kids
more special.
Creativity Matters
We need to make substitute teachers feel welcome on day one.
If we don’t make them feel comfortable, they aren’t going to come
back. At Creative Kids Academy, we greet every new sub personally,
and provide them with an extensive orientation. We encourage
questions and emphasize collaboration. Our center directors
introduce subs to the classroom and facilitate introductions with
the primary teachers who will mentor them. We celebrate our
subs’ birthdays and include them in our employee recognition
programs. Substitutes are also eligible for bonuses, based on their
position and the location.
If our centers are going to keep up with the shortage, we
need to remain creative. There’s no time to remain idle — I
regularly brainstorm new solutions to meet the needs of teacher
recruitment. As an example, I often pay long term substitute
teachers a driving bonus of $300 per month as an extra incentive
to cover the cost of driving a longer distance to fill in temporarily.
I’m pleased to say that our creativity has paid off, and some of
our substitutes have remained with us for more than five years.
As a leader, alignment and growth is important to me. My
biggest success is knowing that many of our current directors
are people that I hired as teachers, aides — or substitutes.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of Spaces4Learning.
About the Author
Brandy Sroga-Coons is executive director of Creative Kids Academy.