Spike in staff illness forces local districts to call off seated learning

Students in the Willard and Republic schools stayed home from seated instruction from Wed., Jan. 19 through Friday, Jan. 21 due to several staff members in both districts being out due to illness. In lieu of their seated instruction, the students kept up their studies through Alternative Method of Instruction (AMI), a type of instruction conducted online, usually with Google Classroom or paper packets.
Republic
The Republic School District announced on Tuesday, Jan. 18, that students would stay home from school due to their being unable to find enough substitutes to fill-in for those who called in sick that day.
According to an e-mail sent to parents, the district started out with 84 employees out due to illness; by the end of the day, that number had risen to over 100. Josey McPhail, director of communications for Republic Schools, said there were not enough substitutes to fill in for even half of the staff members who were out sick.
“The substitute pool is very shallow right now for all types of positions,” she said, “and an area of great need for not only Republic, but for school districts around the country. Last week we saw a ‘substitute fill rate’ of around 40-percent. This means that out of about 100 employees being absent, we only had 40 substitutes available to fill in. That is simply not a feasible number of adults for us to productively and safely hold in-person classes.”
To allow the teachers to prepare for AMI, Jan. 19 was a “no-school day” for students and a work day for teachers. The students took part in AMI on Jan. 20 and 21. The district resumed seated instruction on Monday, Jan. 24, after enough substitutes were located to stand in for three-quarters of absent staff members.
“We (had) a substitute fill rate over 75-percent,” McPhail said. “Although not as high as we would like to be at, this percentage does allow us to host in-person classes and meet the needs of our students and families.”
Willard
The Willard School District announced on Jan. 18 that they were moving to AMI for the rest of the week due to “staff shortages and student absences.” No numbers were given on the number of absences.
The district announced on Jan. 21 that, like Republic, seated instruction would resume on Jan. 24.
In a communication to both parents and staff, Dan Ortega, director of communications and public relations for the district, asked parents whose children had tested positive for COVID or who were awaiting results to contact their building nurses before Jan. 24. He also stated that the Springfield-Greene County Health Department was predicting that the current surge of COVID cases would reach their peak in the following week and urged parents to make arrangements for childcare in the event that the district had to resume AMI learning or have a no-school day. He also reminded staff that if they were feeling unwell and could not work that they should make arrangements for a substitute to fill in for them.
Ash Grove
While Republic and Willard went to AMI learning, the Ash Grove School District continued to hold seated learning. Aaron Gerla, superintendent of schools, said they were lucky not to have been hit with the same surge of illnesses which plagued their neighboring districts.
“Illness comes in waves,” he said, “and to this point, we have been very fortunate to not have the widespread illness that others around us have seen. We continue to monitor our numbers and re-assess daily.”
Should the district see a spike in illnesses that would force them to suspend seated instruction, Gerla said, a plan to go to AMI is in place.
“We would go to AMI days if our student enrollment percentage were to drop significantly, or we had large numbers of staff absent with no substitute coverage for them,” he said.
Gerla added that the district is paying very close attention to the matter.
“This is a fluid situation that we take extremely serious and will continue to monitor on a daily basis,” he said. “Our personnel and student’s well being will continue to be our top priority.”