INDIANAPOLIS — The height of the flu season has hit Indianapolis and classrooms are being impacted.
“I heard specifically from urgent care that over the past two weeks, about 50% of the urgent care patients have been secondary to respiratory illnesses,” IU Health primary care Physician Dr. Ethan Blocher-Smith said.
Blocher-Smith says if you're sick, it's important to stay home until your symptoms subside.
"It's way better for you to get better than making everyone else have a miserable time at work or school as well," Blocher-Smith said.
Some professions have an extremely hard time taking time off, like teachers.
“Sometimes they will make a decision to come in even when they really aren't at 100%,” President of the Indiana State Teachers Association, Keith Gambill, said. “If you are a third grade teacher, and if you miss, your classroom gets divided up among the other folks on your team. Teachers don't want to make that imposition on others.”
Gambill added that some school districts have made efforts to better support substitute teachers.
Dr. Jack Parker has been the Superintendent for Mount Vernon Community School Corporation since 2019. Following the COVID-19 Pandemic, he chose to make adjustments to address the statewide teacher shortage.
“We did a lot of marketing to our parents on social media, direct messaging through school newsletters, everything we possibly could,” Parker said. “We also looked at our pay rate and tried to make sure that was very competitive. We started adding full-time substitutes to each of our buildings.”
Parker added how much harder it has become to recruit quality teachers throughout his 35-years in education.
“We worked really hard to make sure that we're very competitive with signing bonuses, things of that nature," Parker said. "We've been very fortunate to be able to get some great people to apply for positions in our district, but it is still very difficult.”
Gambill says the shortage comes down to the state legislature to resolve.
“Every school probably will tell you that they are struggling with finding substitutes on a regular basis,” Gambill said. "We're going to have to make sure that Indiana is putting the resources in place to make sure we are paying our educators a competitive rate in order to keep them in the profession.”
