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Area Schools Still Facing Staffing Issues

Area school districts are reporting issues with staffing levels, including substitute teacher candidates.

In recent weeks, two area school districts have gone remote due to staffing issues, including the Gowanda Central School District and Panama Central School District. Other districts in the area also have reported similar staffing issues, though none have gone remote.

Jamestown Superintendent Kevin Whitaker said the district is constantly “on the edge.”

“It just takes several cases in the right area, and any school district is in trouble,” Whitaker said. “Primarily, that’s teaching staff and transportation staff. Those would be the ones that if you don’t have those folks, you just can’t run a building in our school district. At any given spot, at any given time, if there is an outbreak, we might have issues.”

Whitaker said from what he has seen, that is where districts that go remote are having issues, whether it’s transportation or the number of available teachers in a school building.

“That’s been the issue — it hasn’t necessarily been lots of kids getting COVID, but it’s been the staff impact of an increase in COVID,” he said. “We’re always thinking about it. We’re always trying to sort out ‘what would happen if…’ I just had a long conversation about that yesterday. But, at this point, knock on wood, we’ve been very fortunate in that while we do have cases, we haven’t had a concentrated group of cases that have impacted us in that way.”

Whitaker said if something like that were to happen, and several cases impacted either transportation or a school building’s staffing level, the district would look at what an individual school would have to do in that situation.

“The impact that it has on an individual school includes everything from coverage and moving staff to cover instruction to potentially doing partially or fully remote,” he said. “That’s not our goal – our goal is to keep kids in school.”

Bemus Point Superintendent Joseph Reyda said his district is keeping afloat at the moment but faces the same issues with substitute levels and bus drivers.

“We have been very fortunate in that we’ve been able to have just enough bus drivers to get our kids safely to and from school,” Reyda said. “We are finding that getting people who are willing to be substitute teachers is becoming more complicated. We have those who are very consistent, but some go to Florida, or some choose not to, so that’s becoming more of an issue for us.”

Reyda said the district hasn’t planned a “Drive the Bus” type of event for substitutes yet, but they are trying to encourage individuals to apply to substitute positions.

“We haven’t gotten to that point right now,” he said. “But, we are just encouraging anybody who walks in the door to fill out the substitute teacher application.”

Southwestern Superintendent Maureen Donahue said every district appears to be struggling with these issues.

“I think it’s impacting all of us,” Donahue said. “We are short substitutes every day. Whether it be in our cleaning departments, whether it be in our cafeteria, whether classrooms or on our buses, we are short-staffed every day.”

Donahue said the issue is serious, but she is grateful to the staff who are making it work, despite the challenges.

“Everybody that is here every day has gone above and beyond to try to cover and get things done,” she said. “I am grateful that our staff is working beyond capacity to try to pull off getting through school every day.”

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