A dedicated team solves a critical staffing shortage.
The Spring Independent School District (Spring ISD) educates more than 34,000 students across 43 campuses—25 elementary schools, nine middle schools, six high schools, and three ninth grade centers in a community north of Houston, Texas.
The national teacher shortage coupled with local pandemic-related labor trends had the district struggling to secure an adequate substitute teacher pool to cover absences for its nearly 2,000 faculty teachers. With a pool of only 300 substitute teachers, the daily fill rate was around 50%, leading to burnout as teachers and administrators were covering additional classes.
The need for recruiting, hiring, scheduling, and handling payroll and compliance for the substitute workforce had become overwhelming.
“We simply didn’t have the manpower to scale it at a higher number,” said Spring ISD Human Resources Director Juan Santos Garza.
Partnership bumped fill rates nearly 30% within a year.
To alleviate this problem, Spring ISD partnered with Kelly Education, an education staffing solution provider with more than 25 years of experience. Within a year, Kelly Education transferred 100 substitute teachers, doubled the talent pool to 700 educators, and increased fill rates to 80 – 90% on many days—a jump of nearly 30%.
“We’re super-excited to have this partnership. Kelly Education has the ability and scale that districts can be challenged with. We are grateful for the opportunity that we have provided our scholars (students) because they help us make sure that there’s coverage in the classroom,” says Garza.
Garza praised the organization’s customer service, calling out the performance of the dedicated Kelly Education district account manager and her team—which includes a local recruiter, onboarder, and talent manager, who all work from an office within the school district’s neighborhood to ensure their commitment to the community.
“The organization is reliable, and they train their staff to do a good job,” Garza said. “They have a whole team in charge of recruiting, screening applications, training, and calling people in the morning to come in
at the last minute. They are a pleasure to work with... responsive and attentive to our needs, making the substitute operation run smoothly so they can serve our students in the capacity that we need them to serve.”
Challenge
The district had an inadequate substitute teacher pool to cover daily absences.
Solution
District hired our partnership team to recruit, onboard, transition, train, and schedule substitute educators.
Result
Fill rates increased by 30% in one year. District expanded the program to include more roles.
Quality substitute educators—and more.
The district was so pleased with the results that Kelly Education now covers other key school staff positions, like paraeducators, clerical roles, librarians, and school nurses.
“If we’re seeing success with the teachers, why not transfer that to the other areas? Good work, obviously, is going to transfer to other areas and evolve,” he said.
Garza also mentioned that many substitute educators were hired as full-time teachers by school principals due to their outstanding work.
Kelly Education successfully filled more than 24,000 absences in Spring ISD during the 2022 – 23 academic year. The partnership between Spring ISD and Kelly Education has proven to be highly effective, helping Spring ISD to overcome its lack of manpower and solve the critical issue of filling teaching vacancies.
They have a whole team in charge of recruiting, screening applications, training, and calling people in the morning to come in at the last minute.”
- Juan Santos Garza, Spring ISD Human Resources Director
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