Montgomery County Public Schools continues to be plagued by substitute teacher shortages, with recently-obtained data showing nearly half of over 164,000 requests went unfilled over the past school year. Current and former MCPS teachers suggest student behavioral issues and insufficient pay rates could be to blame—and some teachers are quitting as a result.
A 10-year veteran MCPS teacher—who requested anonymity for privacy and safety concerns—recently announced she had made the difficult decision to leave the county’s public school system, citing behavioral issues as a key reason. She told MoCo360 that substitutes face unique barriers when attempting to address misbehavior issues.
“Students are in there filming TikTok videos and getting into fights in the classroom,” she said. “They wouldn’t necessarily exhibit that behavior with their own teacher, but as a substitute you don’t have that relationship with them.”
The anonymous teacher told MoCo360 that in the course of her job duties, she deals with middle school students “screaming, yelling, pushing, biting, making threats, assaulting staff members” and more on a daily basis.
Over the course of the 2022-23 school year, MCPS generated over 164,000 requests for short-term substitute teachers, according to data obtained by MoCo360—a number higher than the school district’s 160,500 student population.
Of those job requests, over 75,000 couldn’t be filled by a substitute, meaning another staff member at school had to fill the vacancy or classes had to be combined. Some educators say in recent months they’ve ended up covering an average of one or two classes a week.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, around 12% of MCPS substitute requests went unfilled over the course of the 2018-19 school year. By May 2022, the school district exceeded that average by more than 20 percentage points.
When reached for comment, MCPS spokesperson Jessica Baxter provided the following statement:
“It is always our goal to minimize the need for substitutes and ensure a more consistent and uninterrupted learning environment for our students. We are still working on our efforts to recruit and hire qualified, dedicated teachers to fill vacant positions well in advance of this upcoming school year.”
Jess Porrovicchio spent the past 15 years of her life as a public school educator, seven of them in Montgomery County. She said this year she made the difficult decision to quit MCPS, citing staffing shortages and student behavior issues as key reasons. At White Oak Middle where she taught for the past three years, 816 of the 1,074 substitute requests received by MCPS remained unfilled this past school year.
“There’s so many shortages, it’s getting really bad,” Porrovicchio said. “I just feel like MCPS isn’t doing enough to solve the problem. They’re not taking this seriously.”
Out of a seven-period school day, the average middle school teacher should receive two class periods worth of planning time to create lessons, grade assignments and communicate with families, according to several MCPS teachers.
Porrovicchio said because she and so many of her colleagues have had to fill in for other classes on a regular basis, they’re forced to relinquish much of their planning time—placing them at a significant disadvantage as educators.
“Montgomery County is consistently violating our contracts because we’re not getting our planning time,” Porrovicchio said. “We have it in our contract for a reason.”
She also said at around $19 an hour, substitute teachers are paid significantly less than full-time MCPS teachers, despite the inherent disadvantages they face in being tossed from classroom to classroom without any prior familiarity with students.
“Kids tend to behave better when they know the adults in the building. They’re more likely to make better behavioral choices and be more productive with their work,” she said, suggesting that it would benefit MCPS to assign its substitute teachers to specific schools or clusters to strengthen student relationships and better curb behavioral issues.
Both Porrovicchio and the anonymous middle school teacher quitting MCPS expressed concern about the disparate pay substitutes receive, which they said gives substitutes less of an incentive to put up with the behavioral issues they often witness in the classroom.
“It isn’t worth it,” the middle school teacher said. “Why should they have to do a job where they’re being threatened and dealing with extreme behavior issues for so little money?”
She also added that the staffing shortages have personally affected her ability to adequately teach special education students in her classroom. Many special education students are required to have a support staff person present to assist them during class per their Individualized Education Program (IEP), she explained.
“I went four months without a support staff member in my class, and nine of my 30 students had IEPs,” she said. “That’s illegal.”
MCPS spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on the potential violation of student IEPs due to substitute shortages.
Other teachers have expressed appreciation for the school district’s efforts to monetarily support its teachers but reiterated the benefit of boosting pay for substitutes. Keira Coates is a certified long-term MCPS substitute teacher with over eight years of classroom experience.
“Comparative to other districts, MCPS pays competitive salaries,” she wrote to MoCo360. “I found MCPS to be proactive about addressing staffing needs. Increasing the sub pay rate for certified teachers is one more step they could take to get trained staff.”
The anonymous 10-year MCPS veteran said she’s grown increasingly concerned about student behavior issues in recent years. In the letter she posted to social media detailing her reasons for quitting, she cited motivation issues and lack of discipline or accountability as key underlying factors behind student misbehavior.
“I didn’t go into the teaching profession to put my life on the line in this way. My family shouldn’t have to worry about my physical safety when entering a school,” she wrote. “This is going to result in many more teachers leaving the profession, creating a brain drain of sorts that will have a long reaching impact. We need to do better.”