How to hire a substitute teacher: requirements, pay, sourcing and screening

Substitute hiring starts with a coverage map, not a job posting. List what actually pulls a teacher out of your classrooms in a normal year: same-day absences, planned professional-development days, medical and parental leaves, sabbaticals, and mid-year departures.

Those needs sort into three different jobs. A per-diem substitute covers a single day on short notice. A long-term substitute takes a known block — a maternity leave, a medical leave, a sabbatical — and carries the class: planning, grading, parent communication and the routines of that grade level.

A third option sits between the two: the permanent or building substitute, on your payroll all year, covering whatever the day brings instead of waiting for a morning call.

Write the expectations down before you post anything: which grades the substitute may cover, who leaves the lesson plans, who answers parent email, and how discipline escalates. A long-term substitute is close to a faculty hire; a per-diem sub is close to a pre-vetted roster you can call before the first bell.

That distinction decides most of what follows — the credentials you ask for, the pay structure, the screening depth and where you look for candidates.

If you are writing the coverage expectations from scratch, start from what a substitute teacher does at private and charter schools. That page is the worker's view of the role; this one is the hiring view.

This page is the substitute-teacher anchor in our library on hiring for private and charter schools; the sections below take the hire end to end.

At a private school, the qualification bar for a substitute is yours to set — within whatever your state's certification law actually says about schools like yours. That law differs by state and by school category (accredited, approved, licensed, chartered, or simply registered), and one state's rule never stands for another's.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Non-Public Education publishes a comparison chart of state teacher-certification rules for private schools, but it is a summary built from information states provided before September 30, 2016. Treat it as a starting map for a conversation with your state education agency, not as current law.

Where a state issues a substitute credential, the credential carries its own requirements. California's Emergency 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit, for example, requires a bachelor's degree, fingerprinting and a fee, is valid one year and renewable, and allows up to 30 days for any one teacher per year — 20 in special education.

Whether a state's substitute credential reaches a private school, and which private schools it reaches, is that state's call. Confirm it with your state education agency before you post, and plan for the duties a substitute hire can trigger: background checks, mandated-reporter duties, and any teacher rules attached to a school-choice program your school joins. State certification requirements for private school teachers shows how the categories differ.

Charter schools work from a different rulebook. What a substitute may need at a charter — a credential, a permit or a clearance — is set by that state's charter law and its authorizer, not by private-school practice. The state-by-state detail sits in charter school certification requirements.

Rules change, and categories differ. Substitute-permit, certification and clearance rules are state rules written for named categories of schools. Confirm what binds your school with your state education agency — and with your authorizer, if you run a charter school — before the posting goes up.

Start from the labelled federal tables, then set your own rates. BLS has no private-school or charter-school occupation code, so every figure below carries its series label before you budget from it.

In BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025, elementary and secondary schools (NAICS 611100) — all school ownerships combined: public district, charter and private together — show these national figures for substitute teachers, short-term (SOC 25-3031). The median annual wage was $42,890, the mean $47,560, and the 10th-to-90th percentile range $28,360 to $68,830. OEWS counts 407,590 payroll employees in the occupation across those schools.

BLS also publishes a series for privately owned elementary and secondary schools only (industry 611105, national). There, substitute teachers show a median annual wage of $36,210, a mean of $40,940, and employment of 33,290. The series isolates privately owned schools, but it is still an occupation table — not a rate card for your school.

The same release shows local-government-owned elementary and secondary schools (industry 611103, mainly public districts) at a median of $43,200. That is the public-district comparison for the same occupation, measured across different owners in the same BLS release.

For demand context, BLS's Employment Projections for 2025–35 expect employment of substitute teachers, short-term to grow 2.0% between 2025 and 2035, with 65.0 thousand openings per year on average across all employers and industries. The projections count includes self-employed workers, so do not read it against the OEWS employment figure above.

For a day-rate picture, one published employer scale: the Diocese of Covington's 2026–27 scale pays substitute teachers a minimum of $100 per day for days 1 through 30, then moves them onto its salary scale after 30 days. That is that employer's own published scale for its own schools — a structure to study, not a market rate.

Structure the pay from the job. A daily rate fits per-diem coverage, a higher long-term rate fits an assignment that carries planning and grading, and a salaried school year fits a permanent building substitute. Your rates are yours to set; write them down before the first call.

Classification matters even at a day rate. Under the FLSA teacher exemption (29 CFR 541.303), an employee whose primary duty is teaching and who is employed as a teacher in an educational establishment is an exempt professional — at private, charter and public schools alike. The regulation does not require a teaching certificate for the exemption.

The salary-level and salary-basis tests that govern other exempt employees do not apply to exempt teachers (29 CFR 541.303(d)), so a teacher can be exempt even when paid less than the general salary threshold or paid part-time. Classification still turns on the actual duties, so confirm each role's status with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division or counsel before you fix the structure.

The harder question is employee versus contractor, because a frequent substitute may be tempting to engage on a 1099. The label does not decide it. The IRS common-law test weighs behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship — what matters is the right to control the details of how the services are performed.

The Department of Labor's FLSA rule (29 CFR 795.105, effective March 11, 2024) applies a separate economic-realities test: whether the worker is economically dependent on the school or in business for themself. Its six factors (29 CFR 795.110) weigh opportunity for profit or loss, investments by the worker and the employer, permanence of the relationship, the nature and degree of control, whether the work is integral to the employer's business, and skill and initiative. Calling a worker an independent contractor does not, by itself, remove FLSA minimum-wage and overtime protections if the worker is in fact an employee.

A school has to satisfy both agencies' tests, and each is fact-specific. Where a substitute works your schedule, in your classrooms, under your direction, have counsel review the arrangement before you use it.

Where you post can also bind the pay you show. Washington requires covered employers to disclose the wage scale or salary range, or a fixed wage, plus a general description of benefits, in each job posting — including postings through third parties (effective January 1, 2023, amended 2025). Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires compensation, benefits and how-and-when-to-apply information in all job postings, public and internal. Posting rules differ by state, so check your state labor department's current requirements wherever you hire.

Substitute hiring is local hiring, so start with the people already connected to your school: teaching assistants who want classroom hours, after-care and extended-day staff, long-serving volunteers, and your own recent retirees.

Then work the local market: education majors and recent graduates at nearby colleges, student teachers finishing placements, parents whose children are grown, and retired district teachers. A retiree who is drawing a public pension should confirm with that retirement system how substitute earnings affect their benefits before committing to regular work.

Ask, too, at the district offices and county or intermediate education agencies in your region whether they share substitute lists, training or fair announcements with nonpublic schools. The answer varies by county, and it costs one phone call to find out yours.

Substitute-staffing agencies are the other channel. Kelly Education, a substitute-staffing firm owned by Kelly Services, describes helping schools with recruiting, hiring and workforce management. It calls itself the nation's largest provider of education talent and says it serves 10,000-plus schools and more than 1,000 school districts — the company's own description of its own reach, not an independent measure. What any agency actually takes off your plate is set by its contract, so read it closely.

Whatever the agency handles, the credential and clearance rules from the section above still apply to who stands in your classroom. Put in the contract who verifies what, and confirm with your state agency where the responsibility sits for a school like yours.

Faith-based schools can also work channels of their own: the parish or congregational community, the diocesan or denominational school office, and the education programs at nearby seminaries and colleges. Ask those offices what they can circulate before you spend on anything else.

When you post, say the basics a substitute needs before accepting: the daily rate, the schedule, and who to call. Post to education job boards, college career offices, community boards and your own site. The where to post teaching jobs guide compares the options, and it pays to browse substitute teacher jobs the way candidates see them before you finalize your posting.

A workable sequence for a small school: application read against written criteria, a screening call, reference checks, the background check, and — for long-term or permanent roles — a short teaching demonstration with the grade team you need covered. Run the same sequence for every candidate: the same questions, the same score sheet, the same panel.

Background checks are where substitute screening carries real weight: a substitute teaches your students with little continuity and limited supervision. The obligations are set by state law for the schools and roles each state names — background checks before the first day walks through the employer side.

The state patterns differ, and the differences are the point. Pennsylvania's criminal-history check law (Public School Code section 111) covers all current and prospective employees of public and private schools — teachers, substitutes, janitors, cafeteria workers and independent contractors included, except those with no direct contact with children.

Kentucky's Department of Education interprets its nonpublic-school statute (KRS 160.151) as requiring KBE-certified nonpublic schools to background-check employees generally — teachers, administrators, counselors, substitutes and classified staff. Maine's Department of Education, on its certification fingerprinting page, says coaches and substitute teachers must be fingerprinted every 5 years, regardless of continuous employment; which private schools Maine's clearance law reaches is a question for the state.

At a charter school, the check rules are set in state law. Texas, for example, requires substitute teachers at open-enrollment charter schools to undergo a national criminal history record review (Texas Education Code §22.0836). Confirm which checks bind your school with your state education agency — and with your authorizer, if you are a charter.

One more federal lever: under the National Child Protection Act, as amended (34 U.S.C. 40102), states may let qualified entities — organizations providing care to children, which can include private schools — request fingerprint-based national criminal history checks on employees and volunteers through the state. The individual first provides fingerprints and a signed statement. Whether your state has established those procedures is a question for your state agency.

Reference checks carry the safety weight. Call the supervisor who saw the candidate with children, not the HR file; ask directly whether any concern about boundaries or conduct with students ever came up; document every call.

The federal pass-the-trash provision (ESSA §8546) requires each state, state education agency or local education agency receiving ESSA funds to have laws barring school employees, contractors or agents from helping a person get a new school job. It covers people the employee knows of, or has probable cause to believe, engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor or student. The duty sits on states and agencies, so it reaches public and charter schools directly; private schools are covered where state law extends it. The practical version for any school is the same: document every reference call, and ask each former employer directly about misconduct history.

Build the interview around the substitute's actual day: a lesson plan that does not match the schedule, a class that tests a new face, a student who discloses something personal, a parent who corners you at pickup. Listen for judgment, boundaries, and the instinct to leave a clear note for the regular teacher rather than improvise.

Ask every candidate what they would do if a student disclosed harm — who they would tell, and when. Whatever the answer, make your reporting expectations explicit at onboarding; the state rules in the next section are real.

Treat vagueness about previous child-facing roles, discomfort with supervision, and "I'd handle it myself" answers as the flags they are. None is disqualifying by itself; each is a question mark a reference call should close.

The cross-school guide to the school hiring process covers the full sequence end to end. Substitutes ride the same rails, with the depth tuned to the assignment.

Substitute recruiting runs ahead of the school-year clock, because your absences start the week students do. Build and vet the core pool over the summer, before the first day: applications, reference calls, background checks and an orientation session all take weeks you will not have in October.

Two refresh points follow. Mid-fall, add depth where you learned the pool is thin — the subjects and grades that were hardest to cover. In January, catch the second wave: education majors graduating mid-year, student teachers finishing fall placements, and teachers who retired at the semester.

Known long-term leaves — the maternity leave you learned about in spring, the sabbatical approved for next year — are faculty-hire timing, not sub-pool timing. Recruit those against the school-year calendar, working backwards from the start date; the teacher hiring timeline guide lays the cycle out.

A charter school staffing a launch hires against the charter timeline rather than the school calendar. If that is your situation, put the substitute plan inside the launch plan itself — how to start a charter school covers the sequence.

The paperwork floor is federal: every US employer, private and charter schools included, must complete Form I-9 for every person hired, citizens included. Pair it with the checks from the screening section, completed before a new pool member's first assignment.

Orientation is what separates a list of names from a bench you can actually call. One session before the first assignment: your attendance system, the lesson-plan expectations, the discipline chain, emergency procedures, the names in the front office, and where the sub plans live.

Put your reporting expectations in writing, because a state's mandated-reporter statute can name substitutes directly. Arizona's child-abuse reporting law (A.R.S. §13-3620) names "school personnel, including substitute teachers" among those with the reporting duty, and the statute's text does not limit that duty to public schools. Per the U.S. Department of Education's 2014 summary, Connecticut nonpublic school teachers — substitutes, principals, nurses, coaches, paraprofessionals and guidance counselors included — are required to report suspected child abuse (Conn. Gen. Stat. §§17a-101(b) and 53a-65).

Whatever your state requires, train every pool member on who reports, to whom, and by when — mandated reporter training covers what the training involves.

Keeping substitutes is a service problem, not a perks problem. Pay on the schedule you promised, give the first call to the people who perform, and send feedback after each assignment — the note that says what worked is why they answer your call next time.

Keep the roster honest. Confirm availability each term, retire the names that stopped answering, and track which substitutes your teachers request by name; a short annual re-vet — references and checks on your own cycle — keeps the bench one you trust.

Treat the pool as a pipeline. The long-term leave you staff from your own bench, the building-substitute seat you fill from it, and the part-time specialist who started as a per-diem sub are all hires that arrive already knowing your classrooms, your families and your standards. The teacher retention guide covers the levers schools control.

Employer information, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Certification, substitute-permit, background-check, mandated-reporter, wage-hour and contractor-classification rules are set state by state and agency by agency. Confirm what binds your school with your state education agency — and with your authorizer, if you run a charter school — or with the Department of Labor, the IRS or counsel, as the question needs.