HOLLAND, Ohio — School districts in Northwest Ohio desperately need help making sure kids are able to remain in the classroom as COVID-19 continues to take a toll on staffing.
You may even have seen billboards of school districts advertising their open positions.
With the lack of substitutes and support staff for area districts, there's sometimes a fine line between deciding to go virtual and staying in the building.
One word can easily describe the last year and a half of COVID-19 for many people: challenging.
"Every day is a challenge. Every day, the first things that we are doing in our office are literally going through the day and making sure we have all classes covered," said Springfield Middle School principal Jeff Pendry.
Area school leaders are constantly faced with the pressure of keeping kids in classrooms with a rapidly depleting pool of people to help cover the work.
But, Dan Dudley is one person helping make their jobs a little easier.
"When I started, there was no pandemic. I subbed in the fall of 2019," said substitute teacher Dan Dudley.
Dudley spent more than 30 years as a broadcast executive, managing and owning multiple radio stations in the Toledo area.
He retired in 2019, but says he wasn't quite expecting the kind of challenges he would see coming out of retirement to become a full-time educator.
"I thought this would be something that I might do one or two days a week to keep from being bored to tears and then it kind of sort of became a vocation," said Dudley.
When Dudley became a substitute with the district he says he only wanted to teach high school students because of his business background, but because of the need brought on by the pandemic, he has now taught at each level.
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Because of Dudley's small decision to help a local school district, he is now getting the credentials to be a full-time teacher and has accepted a position at Owens Community College.
"Finding people, enough people to fill that kind of void is a challenge. Personally, I like to come back to the same classroom. I enjoy the variety of different subjects, different students on a daily basis, and frankly the challenge," said Dudley.
Springfield school leaders say because of the staffing shortage, they are doing everything they can to speed up the onboarding process. And for anyone looking for a job, they say there's potential for long-term and full-time positions.
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