CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As schools continued to make the decision whether to keep students and staff in the classrooms or virtual, they also had to answer another question: do they have enough teachers for students?
"The only people it hurts are our children and we just can't have that," said Nancy Vera, the president of the Corpus Christi American Federation of Teacher.
As the pandemic and the risk of contracting COVID-19 continue, school districts across south Texas face low staffing in schools as well.
"What we have experienced this year is that the number of our active substitutes that are actually working has decreased," said Debbie Nunez, the executive director of human resources for Corpus Christi Independent School District.
Nunez said the demand for substitute teachers is greater this year than it has been any time before.
"That some paraprofessionals are being asked to substitute and that's not a very good thing. When somebody who doesn't have experience as a teacher substitutes, it puts a burden on them and it doesn't help the students any," said Vera.
Vera said there's a number of reasons why the districts are having this issue.
"Of course, this is attributed to the pandemic, but also because of the high stress of being a teacher these days, where you have to teach virtually and face-to-face," said Vera.
The Corpus Christi Independent School District was recruiting substitutes as of January 2021 and were on track to hire more substitutes than they would compared to an average school year.
"Employees who are primary caregivers to their parents or they may have a child who chose to focus on remote learning, or they may have a serious health condition where they're afraid to be possibly exposed to COVID," said Nunez.
The problem stretched across city lines as Sinton Independent School District also saw a shortage, not only in the classrooms.
"One area that we are seeing some shortages is bus drivers. For example, today our director of operations who has his certification is actually driving a bus for us," said Chad Jones the superintendent for the district.
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