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An Outstanding Educator in Front of Them, Every Day

Originally written for the AppliTrack “Hire Greatness Today” publication

As we get into the swing of another school year, it is useful to ask ourselves: what is our true work as K-12 HR Leaders? Is it to process I-9s? To ensure compliance with FLSA? To attend job fairs, manage position control, and ensure there’s a substitute in every classroom every day?

As you all know, the answer is “Yes.” Yes, to all of the above, and yes to so much more. There is no shortage of tasks that the HR office must do to ensure that it meets its two most basic functions — which are to ensure the district’s compliance with employment law and to ensure that positions are filled. But there is a deeper ideal, a more salient reason why we exist — and that is to ensure that every child has an outstanding educator in front of them, every day. And because each school district employee is, at any given moment, an educator — we must not lose sight that our most important responsibility is to ensure excellence in every single hire we make and to unabashedly address performance concerns when they arise.

The many callings of an HR Leader

Let’s talk today about the first of these two important callings: to ensure that each hire we make is a quality hire. Given the reality of lean HR departments, we all struggle to make time for this. Few HR departments are seeing an increase in staffing unless it’s correlated to an increase in enrollment, and even in those rapidly growing school districts, the HR office all-too-frequently still falls behind. All of us are tackling far more legislative mandates and numerous new initiatives than ever before. We also face moral issues around pay and workload, hiring challenges when leadership vacancies occur, and the need to deepen our commitment to diversity and equity with a changing workforce and a changing student population.

But for many HR leaders, the greatest challenge faced in ensuring an outstanding workforce is far more basic: it is that district leadership often does not equate our role with this mission. In other words, while we’re tacitly held accountable for the quality of the workforce, we’re not always authorized to do much about it. Many superintendents are not clear on what the purpose of HR is, beyond ensuring compliance and position control.

Ask yourself these two important questions:

1. What steps do you take, as an HR professional, to ensure that every new hire is top-drawer?

2. And what systems are in place to ensure that a marginal candidate is not hired into any position in your school district?

Most of us, if we answer those questions honestly, will find that our response is wanting. Why? Because in far too many organizations (not limited to K-12 by any means) hiring decisions are fully decentralized — meaning that once minimum qualifications are met, a hiring manager (rather than HR) makes the ultimate decision as to whether or not a candidate gets an offer. Those of us in HR recognize that this is problematic; even a gifted principal is fallible when it comes to making a hire. Indeed, some of the most otherwise-capable principals I know are not particularly strong when it comes to hiring. And sometimes food services managers, custodial coordinators, and special education directors, to name a few, are stymied by a lack of quality candidates applying for their vacancies. Given this, they are often more apt to make a mediocre hire than to not make one at all.

So, if our most sacred role is to ensure excellence in every hire we make — how do we translate this into actuality, given the context of our current organization?

Let’s start with two things we know are true:

1. In any organization with more than a few hundred employees, it is unlikely that HR leadership can be intimately involved in every new hire.

2. HR leaders very rarely hold veto power over hiring decisions. Likely, when presented with a poor-quality recommendation to hire, their best option is to try and persuade the hiring manager to think differently. Once in a while, the art of persuasion might work, but most of the school principals I know have already checked the item off their to-do list once they send a recommendation to HR — and they’re none too excited to have their decision-making questioned at that point.

And let’s add two things that we know are true but that we might not be prepared to say too loudly:

3. Many of your principals and managers, as well as members of the senior staff, aren’t particularly skillful when it comes to hiring.

4. “Who you know” is notoriously endemic in the world of school hiring. It is much easier for a principal to hire last year’s student teacher, or the convivial long-term substitute, than it is to hire an unknown teacher from another state who might potentially be a significant change agent. This is even more true in the days leading up to the start of school, when time is limited and the plate is full.

New Year resolutions for HR Leaders

Still, despite these limitations, we are accountable in HR to ourselves and to our organization to ensure quality hiring. So as we re-enter our own school workplaces this fall, let me suggest some of the following resolutions for the coming year.

a. If you sit on the Executive Team of your district, request time on the agenda to facilitate a discussion around, “How do we prevent managers from making poor hiring decisions?” Allow this to be a collaborative discussion on the executive team. The truth is, none of your peers want to make a bad hiring decision either — and they will look to your for some good ideas. Which brings me to my second point…

b. Make sure you have some good ideas to offer. Your peers on the Executive Team probably care deeply about this, but this is your area of expertise. Are there any objective criteria such as testing or electronic reference data that your district uses in making hires? If not, research some. Do all hires get vetted before an offer is made? If so, under what circumstances can a manager’s recommendation be turned down?

c. Bring some data with you. Many districts are surprised when they find out how many teacher hires are made out of current substitute and student teacher pools. If you find that that’s a high number in your district, it begs the question: how do we ensure excellence in the hiring of substitutes and the placement of student teachers, knowing that many of them will ultimately be recommended for full-time hires? In most districts, there is very little if any vetting of candidates for these positions. What’s particularly wonderful about this group of employees is that, unlike teacher hiring, substitute hiring tends to be very centralized, and often student-teacher placement is centralized, too. So likely, you in HR already have a great deal of clout to determine the entry considerations for substitutes and student teachers.

d. Don’t just start the conversation; bring it to fruition. You don’t need to single-handedly come up with the solution, but you need to be dogged about making sure that a solution comes forth and is blessed by the leadership of the district. Of course, Step 1 pre-supposes that HR sits on the Executive Team. If that is not the case in your district, that’s actually a problem you’ll want to take on, too, but maybe not this week. You don’t, however, have to wait for a seat at the table to begin the conversation. Most Executive Teams invite other senior staff to present and discuss topics of importance. If this is the case in your district — get on the agenda anyway.

Ultimately, your best bet to ensuring a systemic approach to ensuring excellence in the hiring process is to recognize that as an HR leader, your job is to facilitate the conversation and to project-manage the outcome. Indeed, it is every district leader’s responsibility — not yours alone — to ensure that every hire is a good one. But bringing the issue to the table and ensuring that the conversation does not die before it takes hold — yeah, that’s your role. It’s a sacred mission, and we are the stewards who will make sure it happens.

Time and Attendance: Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions about our time and attendance tool (formerly known as VeriTime), you’re in the right place! We’ve put together the questions we most frequently hear from school districts who are looking to use Frontline Absence & Time to manage employee time electronically.

What is Frontline’s Time & Attendance software?

Time & Attendance (formerly known as VeriTime) within Frontline Absence & Time is a web-based time and attendance management system built specifically for K-12.

Why isn’t it called VeriTime anymore?

When we launched our time tracking software in 2011 as a counterpart to Absence & Substitute Management  (known as Aesop at the time), we chose the name VeriTime.

As we began to move toward a more holistic set of solutions instead of individual products to support improved collaboration in our customers’ organizations, we found that our old product names no longer supported our goal of offering a single integrated platform. So, we retired the name VeriTime and replaced it with a more functional descriptor (‘Time & Attendance’).

What are some of the benefits of tracking employee time with Frontline Absence & Time?

With our time and attendance tool, K-12 organizations can electronically capture employee time, easily approve timesheets, automatically apply unique payroll rules (even comp time and exception pay) and streamline the payroll process.

That means your school district can:

  • Save hours spent managing employee time
  • Eliminate the need for spreadsheets or paper timesheets
  • Improve compliance with labor laws and bargaining agreements
  • Increase accountability and control labor costs
  • Ensure accuracy when running payroll

How does it help your district save money?

In an average school district, labor costs take up 70-85% of the overall budget. On top of that, the average organization overpays their employees by 1.2% because of payroll errors and inaccuracies. That could be from inaccurate timesheets (solved by electronically capturing employee hours) or mistakes made from manually entering data into your systems.

Frontline Absence & Time solves both of these problems by electronically capturing employee hours, automatically calculating and processing payroll rules and integrating with your payroll system. Plus, you can prevent unnecessary overtime by monitoring hours in advance.

How does it work with Absence & Substitute Management (formerly known as Aesop)?

We built it to work hand-in-hand with our absence management tool, giving you the full picture of employee attendance. You can track positive time (when employees are present) and negative time (when they’re absent) within the same solution, without needing to log in and out of different systems. This allows you to ensure that timesheets are accurate before running payroll.

Another wonderful benefit of having both tools under one roof is the ease of managing accruals — employees can accrue leave based on their actual hours worked, and leave balances update automatically as employees take time off. If your district provides paid sick days to substitutes, Frontline Absence & Time can manage that entire process for you, too!

How does it capture employee time?

Our solution gives you a variety of options for tracking employee time. You can choose to have online timesheets that employees fill out easily from their own computer, or you can have timesheets auto-populate based on the user’s work schedule, which the employee then validates or changes – complete with electronic signature. Or, employees can easily clock in and out with their ID and PIN on any computer, tablet or other internet-connected device (whether their own device or a kiosk you set up). You can also choose to have them scan in using barcodes, proximity cards, magnetic cards or even biometric scanners from other vendors.

You can also use the IP address range feature to prevent employees from clocking in at home or from the wrong location. And to further improve accountability, employees cannot alter timesheets without their supervisor’s approval.

What about integrations?

In addition to being compatible with a wide array of clock-in devices, Frontline Absence & Time also integrates with most of the payroll providers commonly used by school districts. You can find out if your preferred vendor already integrates with our solution on our partners page. If you don’t see one of your vendors on the list, just send us a message and we’d love to discuss your needs.

{See if your vendor is already an integration partner.}

What makes Frontline’s solution different?

Our tool was designed with K-12 school districts in mind, offering a simple-to-use product that’s just what you need, without being bogged down with unnecessary features you can’t use. You can customize the system for all your different bargaining groups, manage split funding and gain real-time visibility into where your employees are in case of a drill or emergency. And because it’s part of Frontline Absence & Time, you gain unprecedented visibility into employee attendance across the district.

Learn more about Frontline Absence & Time  

Absence and Substitute Management (Aesop) Frequently Asked Questions

Questions on our absence and substitute management tool formerly known as Aesop? You’ve come to the right place!

Here are a few of the most frequent questions we hear from school districts who are researching Frontline Absence & Time for automated sub-calling and leave management. Don’t see your question here? Don’t hesitate to contact us!

Why isn’t it called Aesop anymore?

Once upon a time, we only had one product — Aesop. And ever since then, we’ve enjoyed hearing everyone’s ideas about what the name actually means. Did we name it after a famous Greek storyteller? Or could it stand for Artificial Earth Satellite Observation Program? It actually stands for Automated Educational Substitute OPerator.

It’s still automated, and it still finds substitutes for education organizations, and it still operates. But it does more than that, so Aesop is now the absence and substitute management tool within a larger Frontline solution (Frontline Absence & Time).

Will teacher absences increase with an automated management system?

Some districts worry that an automated system will make it easier for teachers to take unnecessary absences because it requires less accountability than talking to a “real” person.

But in fact, the opposite is often true. A study by the Substitute Teaching Division of STEDI.org showed that when principals have access to teacher absence monitoring technology, absenteeism lowers by nearly 14%.

With our tools, central office and campus users have access to electronic reports on everything from leave reasons and balances to the most common absence types and high absence days. You can use this data to monitor trends, have conversations with employees and encourage attendance.

It’s all about using the data that you have!

Learn More

  Lower your district’s absence rates and save money
  See the big picture of teacher absenteeism

How much does Frontline Absence & Time cost?

Districts pay a monthly subscription based on the number of active employees on the system (not including substitutes). This subscription actually includes just 10 months of the school year; two summer months are free. Districts also pay an initial setup and training fee. Please contact us for a quote.

Teachers and substitutes do not pay anything to use the system through their local school district(s).

How will we get the most qualified substitutes in the classroom?

Research shows that between kindergarten and 12th grade, students will have spent the equivalent of 2/3 of a school year with someone other than their regular teacher. So it’s important who is filling those absences. Frontline Absence & Time offers a sophisticated set of tools to ensure the best sub is placed each time.

For one, you can set up specific skills and requirements to match a qualified substitute to the absence (for example, requiring a “math” skill for a math teacher absence).

If you wish, you can also create district-, school- and teacher-level preference lists and exclusion lists to further refine who the absence is pushed out to when. For example, you can set more specific criteria further out and then open the job to a wider pool as the start time gets closer. You can even let teachers specify a list of favorites, too, and you can allow both teachers and substitutes to leave feedback.

We also offer online video courses to train substitutes and paraprofessionals to be more effective in the classroom.

Will we lose the personal touch if we switch to an automated system?

While it’s true that Frontline Absence & Time is not a live person, we’ve built a lot of options into the system to help you keep a personal touch in your interactions with your employees.

For example, many districts are using our software’s web alerts to send messages to teachers and substitutes right within the system, and others are using the custom Letter Writer tool to send out helpful communication on a regular basis. We’ve observed that the districts that proactively send helpful tips to their substitutes often seem to have a more satisfied substitute pool.

Who is using Frontline’s absence and substitute management system?

With school districts in every state using our software, there’s a good chance a district near you is using the system! To date, over 4,000 school districts have partnered with us, representing more than 1 million teachers and 500,000 substitute teachers nationwide.

And Frontline Absence & Time isn’t just for teachers, either! Many districts have also discovered the benefits of also tracking and managing leave for other district employees: custodians, bus drivers, para-professionals and even administrators.

Does it integrate with my other software systems?

The built-in Report Writer tool makes it easy for you to export the data you need to share data with many of your other payroll and other HR applications. Plus, our team offers a variety of custom options, including custom-built reports, automated file transfers via SFTP and web services connections.

In fact, we have experience integrating our solutions with more than 100 other software systems!

Is there an app?

Frontline Absence & Time includes mobile-friendly websites for building-level users and employees, making it easier to access critical features on the go from any smartphone, tablet or other internet-enabled device.

With the campus (building-level) mobile site, users can approve absences, assign a substitute, view the daily absence report and more. Our mobile site also includes all the same permission settings as the full site for a consistent experience. The teacher mobile site makes it quick and easy for teachers to create an absence. Current users can access their account at m.aesoponline.com.

Substitutes can also use the system on mobile devices, or use the Jobulator app, a subscription service that constantly checks our system and notifies substitutes when a new job becomes available for them. You can learn more at www.jobulator.com.

Does Frontline Absence & Time integrate with my other software systems?

No, Frontline is not a recruiting or staffing firm. However, we do partner with a number of great staffing companies who do offer these services if you are interested in getting some help recruiting and hiring substitute teachers.

What Frontline Absence & Time does do is track all of your substitutes’ job offers, work history, demographic information (which can often be imported from your other HR systems), and even ratings and feedback on job performance (if you choose to use this feature).

And with Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, you can easily recruit, hire and onboard new substitutes in a fraction of the time. And because our solutions integrate, you can quickly transition new substitute data into our absence and substitute management tool.

Is our district too small to use Frontline Absence & Time?

Would you be surprised to find out that some districts with less than 5 teachers use our tools to manage absences and subs? In fact, more than 500 districts with 100 employees or less use it for sub-calling, leave tracking or both.

Since the subscription is based on the number of employees on the system, it’s more affordable than smaller districts often think. No matter the size of your district, everyone has room to reduce paperwork and increase efficiency, and that’s exactly what Frontline Absence & Time helps you do.

How does Frontline Absence & Time fill jobs?

The system is designed to work exactly the way you want it to! That’s why we were the first to come out with online substitute placement (formerly known as Aesop) and we continue to offer flexible options.

You may be interested to know that the vast majority of absences are not filled over the phone but by proactive substitutes looking for and accepting jobs online. That’s why it’s important to provide communication to your substitutes and to use the tools available in the system to set your requirements and preferences for substitutes for each assignment.

However, many districts still find value in the automated calls to fill absences, especially last-minute absences. Many districts also fill absences by going into the system and assigning a sub of their choosing manually, as well. The choice is up to you!

How many phone lines will I get?

We don’t think you should ever have to worry about things like phone lines when it comes to filling absences. That’s why we don’t delegate a few phone lines to your district (and then later add more or even charge to add more as you grow).

Instead, we provide unlimited phone capability to all our clients and we don’t charge you for extra phone capacity.

What hardware or software do I need to install?

None.

End of story! Our tool formerly known as Aesop is Software-as-a-Service, with zero hardware or software installed at your district. You never have to worry about power outages – the system is monitored 24/7 in our redundant state-of-the art data facilities, ensuring 99.99% system uptime.

Better yet, the system is multi-tenant SaaS — different than others in the industry — which means instead of each district having their own server (and we all know servers can go bad!), everyone is using the same version, which is then hosted across our many servers. That means if one server goes down, the system keeps running; it also means when we make an update, every client benefits from the update immediately!

How is Frontline Absence & Time different from Aesop?

Despite the name change, our software hasn’t changed in terms of functionality. The Aesop product name has been retired, replaced by a functional descriptor (“absence and substitute management”). And to support our goal of giving every district a full picture of employee time and attendance, Aesop is now bundled together with the time-tracking system formerly known as VeriTime — the two tool sets together form Frontline Absence & Time.

Learn more about Frontline Absence & Time  

The Top 10 Favorite Features of Time and Attendance Systems

A 2011 research study showed that more than 60% of organizations were using automated time-keeping. In just the last few years, that number has gone up even more due to the Affordable Care Act, budget pressures and an emphasis on improving efficiency in operations.

So how are districts using their time and attendance systems?

We took a look at the data we had from the time and attendance management tools (formerly VeriTime) in Frontline Absence & Time, and picked a few of the most popular and useful features to share. Here are some of the favorites!

Top Features of Time and Attendance

1. Timesheet Approval

Want to improve the accuracy of your employee time-tracking? Of course you do!

To accomplish this goal, most districts with a time and attendance management system are using a timesheet review and approval process. Most districts, at the very least, require a manager to approve timesheets before they go to the payroll department. Your system should allow you to set this process up just the way you want, determining the levels of approval needed. Managers can review employee time and then approve or reject the time.

Some districts are also using email notifications to remind managers to approve time each pay period, and others are using digital authorization options to eliminate unnecessary paperwork.

2. Weekly Overtime Rule

Districts love the ability they gain with a time-tracking system to accurately track overtime worked — and accurately pay employees for that time.

In your time and attendance management system, you should be able to create specific rules for handling overtime pay for time worked over the schedule, such as if employees earn time and a half, double time, or comp time (or a combination of these).

3. Master Calendar

Everyone has to manage district-wide events — holidays, days off, calamities, delayed openings, early dismissals — that impact employee schedules and pay. That’s why a Master Calendar is a popular feature of time and attendance management systems.

With a district Master Calendar in your time-tracking software, you can create your own events and apply them to everyone or to specific groups of employees. These events automatically show up on the appropriate employees’ schedules. That means the district doesn’t need to enter the events for each individual employee, and the employees don’t need to submit an absence for that day. Based on the rules you set up, the system will automatically apply the correct payroll rules for the event.

A K-12 time and attendance system should also handle days you have to unexpectedly reschedule. For example, if your district runs out of school days due to snow (something we’ve seen a lot of this year), you can create a “rescheduled day” on the calendar — a makeup day that is outside employees’ normal schedule (like a Saturday or day tacked onto the end of the school year).

4. Custom Payroll Report

One of the best benefits of a time and attendance management system is sending the accurate data you’ve collected to your payroll system.

The majority of districts with time-tracking systems are using a payroll extract report to pull employee time for payroll — including employee names, job types, accounting codes, wage options, locations, absence reasons and more.

A flexible system will offer pre-built reports and let you create your own custom reports based on your needs. These custom reports allow you to sort, filter and group data to easily view overtime and exception pay and to verify data for payroll.

Extracting and importing this data saves hours of manual data entry into payroll and reduces the risk of mistakes.

5. Tracking Substitute Teachers

Did you know you can track your substitute teacher hours with a time and attendance system, too?

While an automated sub-calling system tracks the assignments that substitutes accept, a K-12 time and attendance system captures the actual time worked by each substitute. School districts are using this feature to verify the time substitutes worked and to report on hours worked for the Affordable Care Act (especially for substitutes working multiple jobs or locations).

6. Employee Kiosks

With a time and attendance system, districts can capture time in a number of ways, including electronic timesheets and web clocks. One of the most popular ways is through a central kiosk where employees can clock in and out.

With a flexible electronic time capture system, you can choose your own hardware and set up the kiosks just the way you want them. Many school districts are using an internet-enabled computer or tablet (like an iPad) to let employees enter in their ID and PIN to sign in and out. Others use scanning devices for employees to clock in/out with barcodes, magnetic stripes, proximity cards, fobs — or even barcodes on their smartphones (with a special scanner).

7. Clock-On Portal

Some districts also like the flexibility of letting employees clock in and out right from their own computers rather than at a kiosk.

With a time-tracking “Clock-On Portal,” you can give your employees a URL or create a special shortcut for them to easily clock in and out with their ID and PIN.

8. Work Schedules

We discovered that almost everyone is using work schedules to manage schedules assigned to groups of employees or positions.

With this feature, you can set the start and end times and break times for specific schedules. Those schedules could include the same hours every day or different hours on different days of the week. You can also decide whether or not to auto-deduct scheduled unpaid breaks so that employees don’t have to clock in and out for them.

9. People Locator

Want to know exactly who is where and when?

With a real-time “People Locator” report in your time and attendance system, you can view a snapshot of where your employees are on that day. You can quickly identify who is missing, who is out for a scheduled absence, and who has already clocked in or out. Districts consider this feature one of their favorites because of the visibility and accountability that it provides!

10. Shared Absence Data

Another important benefit of a time and attendance system is having it connected to your absence management system. For Frontline Absence & Time users, for example, the sharing of select data is already built into the solution.

Specifically, Frontline Absence & Time applies absence data directly to the employee’s work schedule. Based on the absence type and reason, this time is matched on the schedule to the correct payroll rules to determine if the time is paid or unpaid.

The shared data also streamlines comp time tracking and leave balances. If an absence should be paid out of comp time, Frontline Absence & Time will associate the comp time wage code with the leave reason and will update the employee’s leave balances in both systems.

The Top 10 Best-Kept Secrets of Time and Attendance Systems

Want to get in on a few secrets? 

Most people know the basic premise of time and attendance software systems: electronically capturing employee time, clocking in and out, reporting on employee time.

But we wanted to go further and find those “hidden nuggets” — little-known features that can bring a lot of value to school districts! So we pulled some statistics from our time and attendance management tools (formerly VeriTime) in Frontline Absence & Time, to see how districts are using the tools available.

The following is our list of the Top 10 little-known features that offer the biggest opportunity for increasing accuracy and efficiency in your time-keeping.

1. Integration With Payroll

Many districts, even those using an electronic time and attendance system, are still wasting effort on manual processes, especially re-entering employee time into their payroll system.

The good news is that many time and attendance systems offer the ability to integrate with your payroll system. For example, the Report Writer tool in Frontline Absence & Time allows you to export your attendance data in a format you can easily import into payroll. Most companies offer a variety of custom options, as well, that help you automate even more of the process.

Also underused, the Payroll Review report and other payroll checkpoints help you verify your data and reduce mistakes in payroll.

2. Digital Authorization  

Most districts with time and attendance systems are using a basic approval process to reduce paper and improve accountability. But many are not using additional digital options that would maximize these benefits.

Some systems allow districts to require digital supervisory approval and signature — meaning supervisors must electronically approve or even sign electronic timesheets before they can move to the payroll departments. A robust, K-12 focused system will also offer many options to control visibility and set multiple levels of approval.

Some systems also provide the option to require digital confirmation or signatures from employees. This feature improves accountability from employees as they are reporting their time.

3. One-Click Kiosk  

Without this feature, employees who work multiple jobs would have to go through a several-step process every time they clock in and out for various jobs throughout the day.

With a “one-click kiosk mode,” time and attendance systems allow employees to clock in once at the start of the day and once at the end — and the system automatically fills in the day’s events based on the employee’s expected schedule. This feature is an especially big benefit for employees who consistently work two or more positions per day that are charged to different account codes.

One-Click Kiosk

4. Rounding Rules  

Using paper methods to accurately capture and pay for time actually worked is extremely difficult — and one of the reasons why many districts turn to an electronic time and attendance system.

However, even with a time and attendance system, district could be overpaying employees by not using proper rounding rules. Our data found that most districts have a rule to round time to the nearest 15 minutes, but this can result in districts paying for time that was not actually worked. For example, an employee may clock in before he or she is supposed to, have some coffee, and then begin work — and get overpaid as a result.

By using more specific rules, districts can accurately pay only for time actually worked. You can use rounding rules to do things like:

— Set different rounding rules for clocking in early or late
— Set different rounding rules for shift start or shift end
— Round time to the employee’s scheduled time  

5. Comp Time & Leave Balances

Tracking comp time and leave balances is another very important (but sometimes overlooked) feature of time and attendance systems for K-12.

Whenever an employee accrues comp time, districts need to track that time and if it is accrued or paid as overtime. Districts also need to track absences taken against comp time and the remaining balance.

All of this can be managed electronically with a good time and attendance system. In addition, a system that integrates with your absence management system provides additional value by matching employee absences in one system to comp time balances in the other.

6. Affordable Care Act Reporting

By now, you’ve probably heard that the Affordable Care Act will require most districts to track and report on employee hours. Any employees working an average of 30 or more hours a week (or 130+ hours a month) could be eligible for benefits.

Thankfully, some time and attendance systems now offer special reports built specifically for this need in K-12. For example, the report below from Frontline Absence & Time allows districts to view employees’ average hours worked over any period of time (you can choose your own 3-12 month look-back period). It will even merge (for the report) employees who are working multiple jobs, in order to view their cumulative hours across the district.

You can toggle between both the 30 hour/week limit and the 130/month limit, and the report will show you employees who are under, over or near the threshold. Additionally, you can search for a date range in the future and review if employees’ scheduled hours will push them over the threshold.

Affordable Care Act Reporting

7. Wage Options  

It’s not easy to keep track of everyone’s specific pay rates. But a good time and attendance system, built for district needs, will allow you to keep all these “ducks in a row.”

A wage options feature will allow you to assign an employee or a group of employees to a specific pay rate based on job type, pay range and seniority step. This rate could be hourly, monthly or a fixed stipend.

8. Kiosk IP Blocking

Did you know that some time and attendance systems allow you to actually block users from clocking in from the wrong location?

This lesser-known feature identifies the employee’s IP address (the location of their Internet connection) and can actually prevent employees from clocking in from home, for example, when they are supposed to be reporting to another location.

9. Clock Exceptions

Do you know when your employees are clocking in early, late or not at all?

Our data shows more districts could be using the Clock Exceptions report to view anything outside the norm of the scheduled hours, whether it’s early/late clock-ins or a missed time punch. Plus, you can sort and filter by date range, location, job type and more.

Clock Exceptions

10. Email Notifications  

It’s hard to remember all the tasks you need to address regarding time and attendance. What some administrators don’t know is that many time and attendance systems can send both administrators and employees helpful email notifications and reminders.

For example, administrators may want to be notified when timesheets are submitted, when they are not submitted, or when they need to be approved. Employees may want to be notified when their timesheets are past due, have been approved or have been rejected.

Is There a Substitute Teacher Shortage Crisis?

Across the country, districts nationwide have noticed an issue this school year in recent school years: a substitute teacher shortage.

Theories circulate about why fill rates and sub shortages are a bigger issue in recent years:

  • Districts limiting substitute hours for because of the Affordable Care Act
  • An improving economy and more competitive job market
  • Increased teacher absenteeism
  • Effects of the pandemic on applications to schools

But what’s the real reason? 

We dug into data from Frontline Absence & Time and other sources. While we found that there is indeed a substitute teacher shortage, we looked into what’s really causing it — and what’s not — to find real answers and solutions for school districts.

What’s Not Causing the Substitute Teacher Shortage

1. Districts Limiting Substitute Hours because of the Affordable Care Act

Many districts are concerned about the Affordable Care Act — and the potential that substitute teachers, who’ve never previously qualified for benefits, could become eligible under the new law. Out of concern for the financial impact this could have, some districts have already taken the precaution to limit the number of hours substitutes can work. The most common is limiting substitutes to no more than 30 hours per week.

Not long after, the media, districts and teachers alike began to wonder if fill rates for teacher absences would take a hit from this precaution. Surprisingly, the data from Frontline Absence & Time shows that, on average, districts limiting substitute hours per week have identical fill rates to those not limiting hours.

Most likely, districts generally in reality have very few substitutes who routinely work more than 30 hours a week. Of course, the full impact of the law has yet to be seen and the number above is based on an average. Districts should monitor their own data carefully and make informed decisions about whether or not to limit hours for substitutes.

2. There Are Too Many “Inactive” Substitutes

Another theory is that districts with a higher percentage of inactive substitutes in their sub pool experience lower fill rates. It turns out that, at least for districts using a web-based sub-calling system, this is not a major factor.

Our data shows that even districts with a large percentage of inactive subs (those working less than 1 time per month) have similar fill rates to those with a lower percentage of inactive subs. Most likely, this result is because the vast majority of absences are filled by proactive substitutes accepting jobs online or the district assigning a specific sub.

Also, Importantly, this result may be vastly different in a district manually calling substitutes, where the sub-caller is wasting time every time he or she contacts a substitute who doesn’t want to work.

Either way, best practices do still recommend taking the time at least annually to remove substitutes from the list who no longer intend to work. The effect on fill rates varies for each district, and a cleaner pool of active subs will allow you to accurately report on your sub to teacher ratio and other fill rate-related data.

What Is Contributing to a Substitute Teacher Shortage 

1. Economic Improvement and a Lower Unemployment Rate

While a lower unemployment rate is good news for the nation, this improvement has had some impact on the number of substitutes available for school districts. As the economy improves, more potential substitutes — including new college graduates — are taking full-time teaching jobs or working in other fields.

Our data, as well as data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, show that as the unemployment rate is steadily decreases, the substitute-to-teacher ratio also decreases.

Since 2011, the unemployment rate has gone down from 8.4% to the current 7.2%. Consequently, the sub-to-teacher ratio has decreased from 1 sub for every 3.22 teachers in 2011 to 1 sub for every 5.98 teachers so far this school year.

The substitute to teacher ratio has a direct impact on fill rates. Data shows that the average fill rates stay at 90% when districts have a 1:3 ratio, but fill rates slip to an 89% average when the sub to teacher ratio approaches 1:6.

2. Increased Teacher Absenteeism

While also not a new issue, districts should not overlook the effect of increased teacher absenteeism on the shortage of substitute teachers. Teacher absenteeism rates have definitely increased — often due to increased professional development at the district. If you’re looking ahead to next year’s professional development (PD) programming, consider planning it with teachers’ time out of the classroom in mind. Additionally, with the pandemic changing perceptions around staying home when feeling under-the-weather, teachers may be calling out at higher than pre-pandemic rates. In some cases, absenteeism is also up due to teachers using up days that they will otherwise lose.

What Your District Can Do About Substitute Teacher Shortage

1. Understand Your District’s Data

The #1 thing districts should do is collect and analyze their own data to drive decisions. Districts can be looking at information like:

  • Substitute pool: What is your districts ratio of total substitute to teachers?
  • Fill rates: What are your best and worst fill rates when you consider school location and skills required?
  • Teacher absenteeism: What are your highest absentee days per week? What role is PD playing?

Austin ISD is a perfect example — they used the real-time dashboard and reporting tool in Frontline Absence & Time to determine that they needed to double the size of their substitute pool. The online tools and resulting changes they made allowed them to hit 100% fill rates.

2. Improve the Substitute Hiring Process

For some districts, recruiting and hiring substitutes requires a huge amount of time and effort. One big potential for improvement is to integrate your absence and substitute management system with payroll.

Before they integrated their systems, the personnel at Garland ISD were spending three days every six weeks hand-keying information for new substitutes into payroll and their substitute management system. The Substitute Office Manager said substitutes often had to wait a week or more before they could start working as the office entered all their information.

Now that they integrated their systems, substitutes can begin work immediately after orientation — and the office saved hours of manual entry.

3. Make Substitute Teaching More Attractive

Many districts are increasing substitute pay to attract more substitutes and compete for the best substitutes. Some districts are increasing pay only for harder-to-fill positions, like special education. If this is not an option, oOther districts are offering incentives, such as free or discounted tickets to school events or even discounts in partnership with local businesses.

Keep communication with substitutes frequent and positive. You can use tools like the Letter Writer in Frontline Absence & Time to communicate more frequently with all of your substitutes, whether it’s providing reminders and tips or asking for feedback.

4. Manage District-Wide Absenteeism

Last but not least, see what measure you can take to reduce the time teachers are out of the classroom, especially for professional development.

Careful management of the district calendar — and coordination with building-level administration — can help avoid excessive absenteeism. Holland Public Schools in Michigan, for example, started moving their teacher training to specific in-service days and after-school sessions to minimize teacher absences.

“It’s about looking at the calendar and time differently,” the superintendent said. “I would much rather have our teachers in front of them than a guest teacher.”

Try these approaches to curb the substitute teacher shortage in your district, and see how Frontline Absence & Time can help.

Time and Attendance Quiz: What Is Your District Spending?

School’s back in full swing — and we’ve got a quick quiz for you!

Time and Attendance Quiz:

#1: What percent of your district budget is made up of labor costs? 
#2: What’s the average percent of errors made in payroll? 
#3: How much did the Department of Labor collect in FLSA backwages in 2023? 
#4: How much do districts spend on paper timesheets?

Answers:

#1: Labor costs make up 70-85% of the average school district’s budget
#2: The average organization overpays their employees by 1.2%
#3: The DOL collected $156 million in back wages in 2023 due to FLSA violations
#4: Multiply your number of employees x number of pay periods x $0.03

Now that you know the answers, think about your school district. Are you overpaying employees due to payroll errors? Are you in compliance with FLSA? Are you wasting time, paper and money tracking, approving and calculating time?

With labor costs making up the majority of your district budget, knowing the answers to these  questions — and ways to increase your savings — is crucial!

Here are a few of the ways districts are using automated time and attendance systems to cut labor costs!

Reduce Expensive Payroll Errors

To err is human, right? And according to the American Payroll Association, those errors in payroll translate into $120,000 worth of overpayment for every $10 million in wages. That adds up!

The good news? Electronic time-tracking systems eliminate much of the manual entry where mistakes can happen. From collecting and approving employee time, to calculating and processing payroll rules, electronic systems can eliminate up to 95% of payroll errors.

Owen Hurt, the Personnel Director at Sealy Independent School District, realized their previous time clock system, which was not Internet-based, allowed for significant human error.

“That was one of the biggest reasons for us to look for an Internet-based clocking in and out system,” Owen said. 

He said they were concerned about the impact of these errors if they were to be audited by the Department of Labor, so they moved to an online system that makes it easier to share data with payroll and their absence tracking system.

Eliminate Unnecessary Overtime Costs

One of the toughest challenges in managing your labor force is preventing unnecessary overtime. Without the ability to view schedules and track hours in real-time, districts often find out after the fact that employees went into overtime.

Jeremy Thompson, Superintendent at Era Independent School District, said tracking overtime was especially challenging because of the large number of employees serving in multiple positions across the district. They now use a time and attendance system that allows managers to check electronic timesheets throughout the week and monitor potential overtime situations.

“We now have that data in real time and can make those decisions during the week instead of finding out after the fact that they worked 42 or 43 hours last week,” Jeremy said. “It’s not always possible to eliminate the overtime, but we at least can make that decision now ahead of time, instead of after the fact.”

Improve Compliance With Labor Laws

As any district that’s been audited can tell you, keeping in compliance with state and federal labor laws is nothing to take lightly. However, tracking all the unique and complex laws associated with K-12 can be a real challenge, especially without a tracking system and automated calculation of payroll rules.

In the past decade, 178 school systems from 36 states were audited for FLSA compliance. Of those school systems, 56% were found to be out of compliance, amassing 1,619 overall violations totaling $1.3 million in back wages and penalties.

School districts are making sure they’re not caught off-guard by using a K-12 system that can track and apply specific rules based on your bargaining units, school district rules and state and federal regulations. Many systems can also help districts attach funding codes to employee time in order to track it against federal funds, such as Title I.

Save Hours of Personnel Time

Time is money, right? And a lot of time sure is spent on labor management at the school district. Patti Polensky, Human Resources Director at Odyssey Academy in Texas, used to manually process the district’s paper timesheets.

“At the end of the month or the pay period, I would have to go find the teachers who forgot to complete their timesheets, so it took a lot of running around on my part,” Patti said. “Once I got the timesheets, I had to look at 70 pieces of paper, scanning each one, so you’re talking a half a day just flipping pages one at a time, making sure that I got the data right. And then I had to physically type that information, one employee at a time, into a spreadsheet and then send that spreadsheet to our payroll department, and they had to manually input it into our payroll system. It was crazy!”

That does sound crazy! That’s why Odyssey Academy moved to an electronic system, where employees now clock in right at their desks, supervisors approve the time with just a few clicks and send the data off to payroll.

Eliminate Unnecessary Paperwork

If you’re trying to be more “green” at your district — and save time and money — take a look at your time-tracking process! Once you factor in all those timesheets for each employee each pay period, the amount of paperwork is astounding. Plus, you have to process and store the paperwork, probably in a big filing cabinet, which doesn’t make for easy tracking or reporting of the data.

Karen Mowbray, the Business Officer at Odyssey Academy, said tracking time and attendance manually was very paper-intensive.

“Sometimes the timesheets just ended up non-existent, so you had to have the employee recreate them or find them,” Karen said. “Now it’s all compiled into the computer, which makes it much easier for us.”

These are just a few of the ways districts are taking control of their labor budget and finding ways to improve efficiency and save time, even in the midst of budget cuts.

Explore how Frontline Time & Attendance can support compliance

5 Things Your Teachers Want You To Know

Can you believe it’s almost back to school time? As administrators work feverishly to get ready for another year, teachers are also gearing up for school — and in a recent survey, gave us some insight into challenges they expect in the 2013-2014 school year.

Do you know what challenges your teachers are facing — and how you can help? We asked nearly 500 teachers what they find most challenging about lesson planning and material preparation for the classroom, and here’s what we found out.

Not Enough Time

Not surprising, 55% of respondents said they struggle with time to prepare lessons and materials for their classrooms.

Overwhelmingly, teachers said they do not have enough time during the day to prepare for lessons and often work in the evening and on weekends to get ready.

Stumbling blocks to lesson planning during the day included:
• Meetings
• Paperwork
• Grading
• Parent Communication
• Data Assessment
• Student Behavioral Issues
• Interruptions

As one teacher put it, “With more demands from state and district assessments and increased testing (hence grading), there never seems to be enough time to focus on planning and preparation.”

Specifically, teachers said they would like more time for differentiating lessons for different learning levels, collaborating with their team, researching and finding relevant materials.

Questions to Think About:
  • Are any teachers getting “burnt out” with lack of adequate planning time?
  • Do our teachers have uninterrupted planning periods during the school day?
  • Are unnecessary meetings pulling our teachers from their lesson planning?
  • Are we giving teachers flexibility to develop plans that meet the needs of students?

Varied Student Needs

Districts are increasingly focusing on meeting the needs of students at many different levels, and accordingly, 33% of teachers mentioned addressing varied student needs as one of their greatest challenges.

This area is challenging due to the extra preparation time required and also the lack of resources addressing each learning level.

Here’s how one teacher explained it: “I teach classes that are learning the same material, but are at different ability levels and filled with students with various learning styles. Trying to create lessons that meet the standards while meeting each student where they are can be difficult, but doable!”

Questions to Think About:
  • Are our teachers trained to address students at various learning levels?
  • Do our teachers have resources to help them differentiate lessons?
  • Do our classroom sizes allow teachers to effectively instruct all students?

Lack of Resources

A third of respondents also cited lack of resources as one of the most challenging aspects of preparing lessons.

One teacher explained she has trouble “finding materials that help my students understand the concept being taught,” adding that her students are usually learning below grade level.

The most common frustrations revealed that relevant materials were unavailable, too hard to find or too expensive. Many teachers said they also struggle to find resources that are aligned to district and state standards.

Questions to Think About:
  • Are we providing our teachers with adequate teaching materials?
  • Are our current resources aligned to mandated standards? 
  • Can we curate or recommend resources to aid our teachers in lesson preparation? 

Aligning With Standards

Out of the teachers surveyed, 21% struggle to address the many requirements of the Common Core, as well as district and state standards.

Problems included:

  • Feeling the need to “teach to the test”
  • Textbooks, assessments and curriculum don’t align
  • Losing time on too many assessments
  • Lack of flexibility in lesson planning

One frustrated teacher explained it this way: “Lesson planning in my district is not functional for the teacher. Rather, it is designed for principals to “keep tabs” on what teachers are doing in the classroom. It is more time consuming than it should be to write a district lesson than if I were to write one that would really help me as the classroom teacher.”

Questions to Think About:
  • Are our textbooks and assessments consistent with our curriculum framework?
  • Do we help teachers see the value in assessments and support them in this process?
  • Do our principals support teachers in creating relevant plans that align to standards?

Technology

Technology: we love it and we hate it. Most of the time, teachers love it — but 17% said they struggle with technology in their classrooms. 

For some, technology is still too unavailable or unreliable.

“Some rooms have great technology set ups and some don’t,” one teacher said. “It makes it difficult to teach the same lesson to all my students fairly.”

Others don’t feel properly trained on new technologies.

“I feel overwhelmed by the inundation of technology and my ability to implement it effectively,” one teacher admitted.

Questions to Think About:
  • How can we prioritize updated technology for our classrooms?
  • Are our teachers adequately trained on new technologies?
  • How can we encourage teachers to use technology for lesson creation?
What other challenges do teachers face – and how is your district addressing them?