Hawaii public school teacher absences eased slightly this week, but were still higher than before the current surge of omicron cases.

The daily average number of calls for substitute teachers was 1,604 this week, according to new data released today by the state Department of Education.

That was down 12% from the Jan. 10 week, when the daily average of calls for substitutes was 1,830, spiking on Jan. 14 at 2,159.

By comparison, in early December, before the surge of the COVID-19 variant struck Hawaii, 1,300 calls for substitutes was typical, an education department spokeswoman said.

Today saw the highest number of this week for calls for substitutes at 1,737. The other days this week were in the 1,500 and 1,600 range.

While there was improvement, the state was still short hundreds of the substitute teachers needed to cover the call outs.

This week 274 substitute jobs went unfilled on average per day. However, that also was down 34% from the week of Jan. 10, when there were 416 sub jobs unfilled on average per day, according to the DOE.