Hawaii’s chronic classroom teacher shortage has eased this year to levels not seen in decades, tied in part to a declining student population as well as new and improved efforts to recruit teachers, according to the state Department of Education.

However, another staffing issue has only intensified amid the ongoing corona­virus pandemic: substitute teachers.

Public schools across the state are having trouble finding substitutes to fill in when they are needed. The problem is so bad that district administrators and other nonteaching personnel are having to take on the role of substitute when there are no other options.

There are even reports of multiple classes having to cluster in an auditorium, gym or cafeteria for the school day while being watched over by an adult.

DOE administrators report that out of a daily average of 1,200 requests for substitute teachers statewide, nearly 150 of them go unfilled. This is happening despite a pool of 3,200 active substitutes.

The state Board of Education, anticipating hiring difficulties during the pandemic, lowered the minimum qualification for classroom substitutes from a bachelor’s degree to a high school diploma.

Even so, the department’s 87.7% substitute fill rate, administrators said, is some 10 percentage points lower than in previous years.

“It’s more difficult this year with substitutes,” acknowledged Sean Bacon, interim assistant superintendent of the DOE’s Office of Talent Management. “It is something we are continually trying to address, trying to figure out how to make our substitute pool more robust.”

Sierra Knight is one of those substitutes. But the 67-year-old retired teacher from California who now lives in Kula, Maui, has not accepted a substitute’s job this year and, she says, neither have a lot of her seasoned substitute-teaching friends.

“They don’t want to be exposed to COVID,” she said.

Knight, who helps moderate a Facebook page for DOE substitute teachers, said many feel the department has not done an adequate job of making the schools safe from the virus.

What’s more, substitutes are increasingly finding they have no control when they accept an assignment. When subs arrive at a school, she said, administrators often use their authority to switch them to a different classroom — one the substitute might not necessarily want.

Knight said the corona­virus pandemic has exposed what she called the dysfunction of DOE, and a lot of substitutes are reevaluating whether they want to continue to be part of it.

“It’s ridiculous what’s going on. I was telling people at the beginning of the year that they should strike,” she said.

The substitute shortage has made it more difficult for teachers to teach and students to learn in large and small schools across the state, according to a Hawaii State Teachers Association survey of its members last month.

In the survey, teachers described numerous instances in which schools were scrambling to find substitutes and often failing.

At least one complex-area superintendent and one assistant superintendent, along with principals and vice principals, have been filling in because of the substitute shortage — not to mention educational assistants and other staff members who have been yanked from their regular duties, the union said.

“Ultimately, the students are losing out on desperately needed instruction this year,” said HSTA President Osa Tui Jr. “When there are no substitutes, some of our kids get herded into either a classroom or an auditorium, and they’re just babysat by an adult who has to watch multiple classes and is not providing any type of instruction.”

Tui said some substitute teachers have told him they’re not interested in working because of the virus; meanwhile, their phones are ringing off the hook every day with auto­-calls from the school system asking whether they would accept a substitute teaching assignment.

“They decline over and over,” he said. “They’re just not willing to put themselves on the line like that.”

Last month the HSTA reminded teachers that their contract says they don’t have to substitute for another teacher who is absent. “If your principal directs you to cover for an absent teacher, you have the right to grieve, as that directive violates your contract,” the union said in a notice on its website.

Tui said the school districts should be doing more to ease the substitute shortage.

Bacon said his staff, among other things, has attended job fairs and reached out to the other unions for help looking for additional substitutes. They have also reached out to UNITE Here Local 5 to see whether any workers in the economically battered tourism sector are looking for a job.

Bacon said that ultimately, he’s hoping the problem will diminish as the islands continue to experience lower COVID-19 case counts and as more people are vaccinated.

“Hopefully, that will help people feel they can go back to substitute teaching,” he said.

Meanwhile, the number of full-time certified teaching position vacancies — 255 as of last week — has reached its lowest point in decades. Only two years ago there were 419 vacancies out of a staff of nearly 13,000 teachers.

Part of that is due to Hawaii’s public schools having lost nearly 8,000 students since the 2019-2020 school year and, as a consequence, there being 270 fewer full-time teaching positions.

But the department has made inroads in recruiting, an effort that helped generate 848 more employment applications this year over last.

“People were thinking through the pandemic that maybe we would have an even further difficult time filling positions,” Bacon said. “But I think that with our outreach, it has helped us to try to fill as many vacant positions as possible.”

In addition to increasing its presence at job fairs here, on the mainland and abroad, the department has gone digital in recent months with a teacher recruiting website and a Facebook page aimed at those with an interest in teaching in the islands.

The department hired an outside agency to develop and market the TeachIn Hawaii.org website, which features at least 14 newly minted DOE “ambassadors” — current teachers who volunteered (with some extra pay) to interact with potential recruits.

At the website, the ambassadors, of all races and ethnicities, talk about their jobs and the islands and invite potential teachers to contact them with additional questions.

“I’ve got a good staff of people who have done some creative things. That Teach in Hawaii website is one of those things,” said Kerry Tom, director of personnel management, the recruiting arm of the Office of Talent Management.

But the union’s Tui told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” on Friday that the teacher shortage is far from over. He said his members say it’s getting worse, bolstered by a growing number of teachers who are leaving the system due to unsafe con­ditions caused by the virus.

“Teachers are just saying, ‘I need to get out. I need to be like my retired friends who used to substitute for me. I just need to get away from all of this craziness right now,’” he said.

Tui, whose union has been sparring with DOE over the extent of the safety conditions, said the teacher shortage is affecting the students.

“When they don’t have qualified teachers in the classes, they’re not getting what they need. This a very critical time for all of those students.”