Warren Schools Moves Substitute Staffing In-House

Warren County School Board voted to terminate its contract with a staffing agency in an effort to pay its substitute teachers more.

Director of Schools Grant Swallows said that uncertified subs currently make about $60 a day. He said they hope to increase those wages to more than $70 a day.

“And in order to do that in a tight budget time we felt like we could bring that back in house,” Swallows said. “Make the substitutes our own employees, and ultimately pay them more hopefully a long the way. And hopefully, that will help us recruit more substitute teachers.”

Swallows said that they plan on hiring someone to manage the substitute teachers and the hiring process. He said that this new process will be implemented by next school year.

Swallows said that he wanted to emphasize that it was not an issue with the agency. He said that they would love to keep their current substitutes and invite any and all qualified subs to apply.

“Our current subs are employees of ESS so we’re trying to get the word out to them to just be patient with us while we dot his transition,” Swallows said. “Because we are certainly going to need them. So we’re trying to get all of those fears calmed, and we’ve been working hard to do that over the last few days and we’re obviously going to have to move pretty quickly.”