Muscatine Schools to host substitute job fair

MUSCATINE — To address what they called an "extreme" shortage of certain substitute positions, the Muscatine Community School District will hold two job fairs in early February.

In particular, they are looking to employ people who can fill in for non-certified staff, such as paraeducators, building aides, food service workers and bus drivers. For positions like these, the district maintains a measure called the fill rate to assess how often an absence of a position was filled with a substitute.

According to Jill Bourquin, director of human resources for the district, though the fill rate for substitute teachers is as high 94 percent, for these other positions, the fill rate is not as high.

"We looked on our absence management system and our fill rate for (paraeducators) is a lot lower than we want it to be," Bourquin said. "It was down in the 70 percentile range ... Which means then the buildings have to try and get coverage."

To begin recruiting more substitutes for these hourly positions, Bourquin said that in fall of 2017 the district raised their pay.

"For (paraeducators) that work with special education students, it was $8.50 an hour, and we are now paying $10 an hour for a (substitute)," Bourquin said. "And then we have building aides who do various things around the building with non-special education students. We raised that from $7.50 to $9 an hour."

Bourquin said for parents looking to spend more time in their child's school, the substitute roles might be a good fit.

"It's great for parents who have students in the school system because they can work and basically leave at the same time as their kids and then be home when they get home," Bourquin said.

Bourquin said that the job fair they did in 2016 was effective at getting people in the door. She hopes this one will be similarly successful.

"We did one of these job fairs in 2016," Bourquin said. "We were able to get a few people in the door wanting to work in the schools. We are trying it again."

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