When last school year started, Crystal Clayburn was excited. Sure, the year before had been rough. But administrators at Oak Park Elementary, where her children attended, had hired a new teacher for their classroom.
Clayburn has two sons in first and second grade who are autistic and nonspeaking and attend extensive support needs classrooms. These are classrooms for students who require the highest level of support.
But when Clayburn walked through the door, she found the class was overenrolled. Administrators ultimately transferred one of her sons to a new extensive support needs classroom they created – but the class had no permanent teacher.
For the next year, a rotating series of substitutes attempted to handle the most difficult assignment on a school campus. The classroom’s support staff did the best they could, she said, but results were bleak.
Clayburn said the class spiraled out of control. Kids broke windows and students had to be evacuated. At one point, a substitute left her child on the playground after recess, Clayborn said. Things got so bad that she and other parents repeatedly brought concerns to district leaders. It was demoralizing.
“I really thought that there would be some progression for my boys, that things were going to be different. Instead, it was just another year of broken promises,” she said.
The classroom had a substitute for 166 of 180 school days. They only got a fully credentialed sub for 68 days. They were only assigned a substitute with a special education credential for four days. That means most days the class didn’t have a substitute with the training or certifications required of full-time teachers. They almost never had substitutes certified to work with kids with disabilities.
Oak Park isn’t alone. According to data obtained by Voice of San Diego, special education classrooms in at least 21 San Diego Unified schools used substitutes for at least half the school year.
The majority of the subs assigned were not fully credentialed. Even fewer had special education credentials. Schools in poorer areas and extensive support needs classrooms were particularly hard hit.
To San Diego Unified officials, this is just another feature of the nationwide special education crisis. Schools are serving more disabled students every year, and special education teachers are hard to come by.
But to the parents who entrust the district with their children, the trend feels not only dangerous, but like a betrayal of the district’s responsibility to provide a free appropriate public education.
“It’s the absolute worst experience imaginable to feel like your children are the gum on the bottom of somebody’s shoe,” Clayburn said. “These kids matter.”
The stakes of persistent substitutes can be incredibly high for disabled children. Students with disabilities are more susceptible to the instability created by chronic substitutes. Effectively teaching them also requires a whole host of specialized skills, some of which are only taught in special education credentialing programs.
“Subs don’t have the experience, they don’t have the training, they don’t know exactly how to do all the IEP forms,” said Tuan Nguyen, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri. “That hurts students because they aren’t able to respond and really provide the kind of services that students with disabilities need and deserve.”
The instability is exacerbated by requirements that substitutes without full credentials are only permitted to work a total of 20 cumulative days in a special education classroom. That means uncredentialed subs are switched out monthly.
These uncredentialed substitutes also aren’t legally allowed to manage special education caseloads. And while all special education classrooms have support staff like paraeducators, they aren’t allowed to manage caseloads either. Often, teachers in neighboring classrooms or even retired former teachers are left to pick up the IEP load, something that’s led to high caseloads and sparked heated battles at San Diego Unified in recent years.
Monique Barrett, the president of San Diego Unified’s teachers union, said the situation is painful both for teachers and for parents. If all the pieces fall into place – correct staffing levels, knowledgeable paraprofessionals, supportive administrators and seasoned parents – subs can, miraculously, make things work, Barrett said. But that’s far from the norm.
“Essentially what’s happening sometimes is they just get bodies. They get bodies to fill the position,” Barrett said of the usage of uncredentialed substitutes. “If we’re not offering the supports that need to be offered, then are we really doing our jobs?”
For Virginia Rodriguez, the impact of a revolving door of substitutes has felt profound. Her 8-year-old son Ezekiel is on the autism spectrum. He’s mostly nonspeaking and has attended Lincoln Park’s Porter Elementary since kindergarten.
Over the years, his education has been routinely interrupted by substitutes. By Rodriguez’s count, Ezekiel had substitutes for almost all of kindergarten, all of first grade and half of second and third grade. Many of those subs weren’t credentialed, Rodriguez said.
That instability meant Ezekiel was introduced to education as something more akin to daycare than a real school, Rodriguez said. That’s meant he hasn’t made nearly the progress she’d hoped he would. She’s also watched as what progress he made in therapy “went down the drain,” giving way to new, troubling behaviors.
Rodriguez started this year hopeful. Ezekiel finally had a talented full-time teacher and he was making good progress. His classroom wasn’t listed as one that relied on substitutes this year. Then, the teacher was hired to be a trainer for the district and the revolving door of subs started right back up.
“It’s been a mess. There’s been no structure, no consistency. He got that for like four or five months, and that was it out of Ezekiel’s whole school experience,” Rodriguez said. “My son was failed in every way.”
The data on the prevalence of substitutes in special education classrooms is messy. Voice requested information about all special education classrooms in which a substitute taught for at least 50 percent of days in the school year.
What San Diego Unified officials provided only lists the number of days a substitute was assigned to special education classrooms, not how many days they were assigned to specific classrooms. That means some sites include multiple classrooms.
The district reported that 21 schools had special education classrooms that relied on substitutes for at least half of the year. Those classrooms only received a credentialed sub 41 percent of the days one was assigned. They only received substitutes with credentials to teach special education 22 percent of the days one was assigned.
San Diego Unified’s Deputy Superintendent, Nicole DeWitt said the substitute issue boils down to a shortage of qualified special education teachers. The district isn’t alone in grappling with them. In recent years, schools across the country have been hit hard by staffing crunches. Fewer people are becoming teachers, meanwhile more teachers are leaving the profession, particularly after Covid,
“What you get is this sort of perfect storm,” said Nguyen, the professor from University of Missouri.
That shortage is particularly acute with extensive support needs teachers, who require specialized credentials De Witt said. She wasn’t sure if the district had ever started a school year fully staffed for extensive support needs teachers. This year, for example, the district is beginning the year with three vacancies.
The data bears that out. Classrooms for extensive support needs students were both more likely to require subs and less likely to receive credentialed substitutes.
For parents, though, that’s particularly concerning. These are students who have serious needs, like medical or behavioral issues, that often require support from trained professionals. That can mean they require medical devices to eat or routinely put inedible things in their mouths.
San Diego Unified schools in poorer communities were also much more likely to have substitutes without full credentials. Some never received a substitute with a special education credential.
DeWitt chalked this disparity up to a volume issue. Schools in poorer areas tended to have more extensive support needs students, which led to significantly more of the difficult-to-staff classrooms. With more classrooms, there were more instances of needing persistent substitutes. But in all cases, DeWitt said, the district works hard to support classes that routinely relied on substitutes.
“Our special education department supports school sites to ensure that the class has the educational materials and supports that they need to continue to adhere to the IEP of each individual student,” DeWitt said.
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