The Sub Shortage Got Better. So Why Doesn’t It Feel Like It?

If you’ve worked in or around a district office over the last few years, you probably remember what it felt like when a teacher called out and there were simply no substitutes available. Finding subs became an acute challenge. In Frontline’s 2024 K-12 Lens survey, substitutes were among the most reported shortage areas, right alongside special education teachers and paraprofessionals. One respondent described a reality that many schools were living with: “Each and every day there is a coverage plan as we lack the staff needed to provide the level of instruction and staff-to-student ratio recommended.” 

Districts responded proactively. Many raised daily rates, built their own substitute pools, recruited in new places, and partnered with outside staffing organizations. Those were sensible responses to a hard problem, and the HR teams, principals, and front-office staff who worked hard to solve it deserve credit. 

Fewer districts report shortages now 

The encouraging news is that the numbers have moved. Across three years of K-12 Lens data, the share of districts reporting staff shortages fell from 81% in 2024 to 61% in 2026. Among districts that reported shortages, the share of those saying they had a shortage of substitutes dropped from 78% to 22% over the same period, with similar declines for special education and paraprofessionals. 

Hiring and retention feel different, too. In 2024, about two-thirds of leaders told Frontline that hiring had gotten harder over the previous year, and this year only about a quarter said so. In fact, more leaders now say hiring has gotten easier (38%) than harder (25%). Retention followed a similar path: the share saying it had become more difficult fell from 66% to 24%. 

That’s progress, and the picture is getting better — at least in aggregate. But if it still doesn’t feel like it in your day to day, the data offers a few clues about why. Average teacher retention slipped slightly this year, from 78% to 74%. And while shortages eased in most roles, they grew in a handful, including school psychologists (22% to 31%), English language arts teachers (17% to 24%), and administrative staff (17% to 21%) — all roles that are increasingly demanding, thanks to higher levels of student need, more mandates, and higher workloads. 

Following one absence all the way through 

Let’s get back to substitute teachers. To see why a filled absence doesn’t always mean a lighter day for everyone, it helps to follow one from the first phone call to the last piece of paperwork.

Here’s the scenario: at 6:15 on a Tuesday morning in October, a resource-room special education teacher calls out sick, and by the end of the day it’s clear she’ll be out for at least three weeks. The front-office secretary sees the notice before she’s finished her first cup of coffee, and by 6:35 a substitute has accepted the job through the absence management system. That’s a win — a few years ago, that step alone might have taken the whole morning. 

The substitute can deliver the small-group instruction that several students’ individualized education programs (IEPs) call for at 10:00, at least at first, because the absent teacher sends instructions from home. But the substitute doesn’t have access to the IEP system, so she can’t see each student’s goals or accommodations, and those instructions only go so far. By the second week, the assistant principal realizes the substitute is working blind. He pulls a more complete history and schedule from the IEP system so the substitute can keep delivering services, and moves the classroom walkthroughs he was planning on doing to “later this week.” 

Speech and occupational therapists come to collect students for their sessions as usual and log them in the IEP system, since those services don’t depend on the absent teacher. The specialized instruction minutes are a different story. The substitute tracks the minutes she delivers on a paper log that someone will need to type into the system later — and until those minutes are entered, no one can easily see which students are getting less than their IEPs require. 

On Friday, the secretary sits down to match the timesheet against the substitute sign-in sheet and the teacher’s leave request. She has to check three different places to find them — and one of them is handwritten. The following Wednesday, the payroll specialist emails with questions: Which leave category applies? Does a special education placement pay the substitute a different rate? 

Then in December, at the end of the nine-week grading period, the teacher (back in her classroom and serving as these students’ case manager) sits down to write IEP progress reports and finds that several of them have slipped off track on their goals. Getting them back on track means compensatory time, which costs the district money and falls to the teacher, who independently finds the extra time to provide those services. 

When you add it up, the absence itself was covered in about twenty minutes, but the ripple effects lasted into the next grading period. Along the way, it passed through seven people’s hands. Each individual person did their job well, but no single person was responsible for seeing the whole thing through.

What the data tells us about the pieces of that story 

Special education remains the most commonly reported staff shortage. (Among districts reporting shortages, 36% pointed to special education.) Even more interesting, it seems that workload, rather than the headcount alone, is the main constraint. Among the special education leaders we surveyed, 71% said a single IEP takes five or more hours to develop and finalize, and 42% said it takes more than seven. More than half (52%) called IEP workload a significant factor in staff burnout. As one respondent put it, “Timely IEP completion isn’t held back by lack of commitment, it’s the workload.” 

That pressure isn’t limited to special education. When we asked leaders across roles what they see as the greatest threat to teacher retention, nearly one in five pointed to administrative burden and compliance workload, putting it third — right behind pay and student behavior.

An absence is more than an HR task 

In most districts, an absence is treated as an HR task, and in a narrow sense that’s accurate, since someone needs to be found to cover the class. But the same absence also touches student services, payroll, compliance, and school leadership. Each of those areas has a different person responsible, a different system (or spreadsheet), and a different timeline. Every step in the chain belongs to someone, whether that’s HR, special education, payroll, or the principal’s office, but the chain as a whole often doesn’t belong to anybody. And that’s how one person’s absence can still be causing issues months later.

This is why coordination is so important: connecting those steps so that what happens at 6:15 a.m. is visible to the people who will need to act on it on Friday, the following Wednesday, or months later. The 2026 K-12 Lens report points in a similar direction. Looking at student attendance, it found that outcomes are “influenced less by the presence of any single service and more by how supports are structured, coordinated, and delivered.” The same idea can apply to the operational side of a school day. 

Extra work falls on people 

Most of the time the chain does get finished — because people take on the extra work. The secretary stays late to reconcile the sheets, the assistant principal pushes walkthroughs to later in the week, the special education teacher finds time in her own schedule to make up missed services, and the school nurse handles whatever lands on her desk. That effort is real but never shows up in the budget, and it tends to be heaviest in the buildings and roles where students need the most. 

When we asked districts how they’ve recently increased support to help retain staff, the most common answers were employee wellness programs (37%) and coaching or mentoring (35%). Those are good investments, and they matter to the people who use them. About a quarter of districts also added support staff or technology to make administrative work easier, which is encouraging. But what stands out is the bottom of the list, where the responses that most directly take work off people’s plates are: reduced workload or protected prep time (20%), smaller classes or adjusted schedules (17%), and streamlined compliance and documentation (16%). 

Most of what districts added this year helps people cope with the load, rather than making the load itself lighter. That’s an understandable place to start, especially when budgets are tight, but it’s treating the symptom and not the root cause. 

Questions to ask in your own district 

Here are a few questions to ask that may help you see where this shows up in your own district: 

• If a teacher called out tomorrow, who in your district could see the whole path of that absence, from the first call to the payroll entry to the service documentation? 
• Where is information being re-entered or matched up by hand, and who is doing that work? 
• Which roles in your buildings are absorbing the most coverage, and does anyone outside those buildings know? 

If the answer to the first question is that everyone sees part of the picture but no one sees all of it, that’s a useful place to start. Our 2026 K-12 Lens report found that “districts that organize work clearly, use data with confidence, and rely on systems that reduce manual effort tend to report steadier conditions,” and in our experience, that work often begins with mapping out one ordinary Tuesday.