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February 10, 2025 • Insights
This school year, consistent absence management continues to be a top priority for many schools and districts across the U.S. While the ongoing double-shortage of full-time and substitute teaching staff (not to mention other positions such as bus drivers) may seem like old news, HR teams are gaining greater clarity into a troublesome trend behind these challenges: staff burnout and low morale.
In April 2024, the Pew Research Center surveyed over 2,500 public school teachers to ask, “If there’s one thing you’d want the public to know about teachers, what would it be?” Among the six themes that emerged were two sentiments that paint a fuller picture of the reality of teaching in today’s classrooms:
These two observations are a recipe for low morale and burnout if not carefully mitigated.
EducationWeek’s new Teacher Morale Index reinforces these experiences. Overall, they report that teacher morale is low, even accounting for the variation in morale based on teachers’ subject areas. Morale seems to be dwindling regardless of the school setting (urban, suburban, town, rural).
For the 2024-2025 school year, HR teams and school leaders must look for and respond to early signs of burnout among their staff. This includes both full-time and substitute teachers, where intentional engagement is increasingly important to keep quality guest staff coming back to campuses.
Here’s what your HR team can do to help retain employees, stay ahead of burnout and keep fill rates high.
As school districts strategize ways to retain their staff — especially those hard-to-recruit positions such as special education teachers — it will be important to understand what truly incentivizes individuals.
Let’s take substitute teachers, for example. Our 2024 Substitute Teacher Survey revealed that among the top factors that impact a guest teacher’s decision to consider a job were:
Substitutes also reported that they value when schools reliably provide lesson plans and have friendly office staff as they choose assignments. It behooves HR teams and school leaders to respond to these desired factors and ensure that at minimum, these asks are met.
Modern absences and substitute management software should align with what delights substitute staff most. That’s why Red Rover designed its Absence Management solution around flexibility for guest staff and ease of use for teachers, school principals and district leaders. Learn more about how our solution can streamline the entire workflow, from initiating time-off requests to assigning substitutes to classrooms.
For more creative suggestions and inspiration around staff retention, download our guide to strategic substitute management.
Research already shows the positive impact of effective staff development on classroom teaching practices, which in turn can improve student learning outcomes (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Akiba & Liang, 2016). But historically, substitutes have been left out of this equation — even though guest staff want to learn more about skills like effective classroom management.
Interest in professional learning support for substitutes is rising across K-12 schools, and we should expect that desire to grow. In addition to classroom management techniques, substitutes shared in our 2024 Substitute Teacher Survey that they also want to learn more about:
You can use these three topics as inspiration to identify opportunities to support guest staff with building these skills, whether you adopt an in-house PD approach or choose to partner with an external organization like Substantial Classrooms.
If you’d like more information about what quality professional learning for substitutes looks like, take a look at these resources:
Last but certainly not least, HR teams must monitor technology’s continued and rapid evolution this school year and the implications it may have on staff engagement.
In particular, it’s hard not to talk about artificial intelligence which is already making headlines for both supporting school staff and causing major kerfuffles in districts. In addition to the buzz, however, it’s important not to lose sight of the other ways in which digital tools are (and must) advance.
Here are a few features and capabilities to consider as you design strategies to keep staff morale high and burnout rates low.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In particular, there is an opportunity for AI to help reduce the amount of time or brain space spent on everyday tasks — with careful monitoring. For instance, a recruiter may leverage AI to help him draft the first version of a job description, allowing him to focus on editing and refining the details to match the needs of a vacant role.
Take the time upfront to explicitly define your team’s boundaries and clear use cases around AI. No technology can be the “magic bullet” to complex challenges like staff absence management or retention!
Interoperability
These days, interoperability — or how accurately and smoothly a software shares data with and receives data from other platforms — is a must-have feature for absence management.
For instance, when HR teams use two different platforms for payroll and absence tracking, they often are stuck crunching the numbers and feeding them between systems manually. However, if those systems connect seamlessly through interoperability, HR does not need to worry about managing payment to substitute teachers who recently covered vacant classrooms or staff who covered extra shifts.
Interoperability isn’t created equally in all technology tools, though. “All-in-one” K-12 platforms often struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of technology evolution. This critical capability often suffers as a result.
That’s why many educators are increasingly turning to their counterpart, “best-in-breed” solutions. This kind of software focuses on addressing one specific challenge really well and prioritizes interoperability with other platforms that solve different problems. (Did you know? Red Rover Absence Management is a best-in-breed solution! Learn more here.)
And yet, even the best of technology on its own can only go so far in supporting educators to do their jobs more effectively.
When districts search for absence and substitute management platforms, they may not realize just how critical the vendor partner is. The right vendor is immersed in the nuances of K-12, recognizing the unique features needed to support this market specifically. Further, vendors who work alongside you ensure your district's needs and priorities are addressed by their offerings. Last, they source educator feedback and guidance as they build these features — creating solutions by educators, for educators.
The right partnership can make all the difference with not only a smooth absence management implementation but also a solution that evolves alongside your organization’s emergent needs. This is essential to ensure your staff gets the support and solutions they need to be successful!
As you search for the right vendor partner to support absence and substitute management in your schools, keep an eye out for these features in their offerings. These are signs that a vendor truly understands what modern K-12 workforce management looks like:
Use our Vendor Partner Checklist and Absence Management Solution Checklist to help you review your existing absence management software vendors or explore potential new solutions.
Want to uplevel your absence management strategy? Red Rover delivers best-in-class solutions for mission-critical K-12 human capital management. Our Absence Management, Time Tracking, and Hiring solutions help HR teams optimize staffing, maintain high fill rates, and keep operations running smoothly—all with an intuitive, user-friendly interface.
