Baltimore County Public Schools needs roughly 3,000 substitute teachers this year but has managed to hire only about 1,000, leaving teachers, administrators and other staff to scramble and cover classes that would otherwise sit empty. The shortfall has rippled through schools across the county as the district works through a major shift in how it staffs substitutes.
According to WBFF, BCPS ended its four-year outsourcing contract with Kelly Education, the staffing firm that had managed the district's substitute program since 2022. Kelly Education had been responsible for recruiting, screening and training substitutes, while BCPS continued to pay their salaries directly, a cost the district carries regardless of who manages the hiring, per the same report. The district brought substitute staffing back in-house for the current school year, according to WBFF's reporting on reporting originally published by the Baltimore Sun.
Per WBFF, the decision traces back to cost-cutting measures approved under former superintendent Myriam Rogers in 2025, which included ending the outsourced substitute arrangement. Her successor, Bill Heiser, has estimated the move could save the district between $3 million and $5 million, the station reports.
Staff Pulled From Their Own Jobs to Cover Classes
The gap left by the staffing shortfall is being filled by the district's own employees. Teachers, administrators, paraeducators and English language development staff are being pulled from their regular responsibilities to cover classes, according to Kelly Olds, president of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County, as cited by WBFF. School employees are effectively covering for absent colleagues on top of their own workloads, the station notes.
The arrangement BCPS just unwound had shown measurable results. The Kelly Education case study on its Baltimore County partnership states the school board approved the staffing deal in June 2022, with 730 substitute educators ready for the start of that school year and 370 more added the following month. Kelly went on to fill 133,000 substitute assignments during the 2022-23 school year, 34,500 more than the prior year, and covered nearly 1,000 long-term substitute positions at an 87% fill rate, the case study says.
Fill Rates Had Climbed Before the Switch
Those gains followed a rough stretch. Fill rates for BCPS substitutes averaged just 57% during the 2021-22 school year, according to the Kelly Education case study. By contrast, the Capital Gazette reported the fill rate had soared to 85.5% as of Dec. 1 under the Kelly arrangement, with the newspaper noting that fill rates often reached 80% once the staffing firm took over. The Capital Gazette also reported that recruiting and retaining substitutes remained as difficult as attracting full-time teachers statewide, even as several Baltimore-area districts saw improvement, citing a Maryland State Department of Education spokesperson who put statewide teacher vacancies at 2,000 as of September 2021.
Neighboring districts have posted stronger substitute coverage in recent years. Carroll County Public Schools filled 150 of 159 absences needing coverage on a single day in January, a 95% fill rate, per the same Capital Gazette report. Harford County Public Schools reported an 83% daily substitute fill rate, only four teacher vacancies, and 936 active substitutes, though the district said it could still use more to meet varied coverage needs, the paper noted.
A Playbook Philadelphia Already Tried
Baltimore County is not the first district to part ways with Kelly amid substitute struggles. The Philadelphia School District moved to end its contract with Kelly Educational Services after the 2021-22 school year, replacing it with a two-year, $58 million contract with ESS Northeast, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the time, Kelly was filling just 41% of Philadelphia's substitute-teaching jobs in mid-October, prompting the district to offer $50 daily bonuses for substitutes and $100 bonuses for substitute nurses after Kelly raised pay. The Inquirer reported that Philadelphia schools covered the gap much as Baltimore County is now, with teachers giving up preparation periods and administrators and counselors stepping in to monitor students.
BCPS applicants for the 2026-27 school year will now go directly through the district rather than Kelly, according to a district hiring notice posted on the BCPS website, which states the district is welcoming substitute teachers as it transitions services from Kelly Education back to the district. Under the prior system, a district FAQ document had required anyone interested in substitute teaching within BCPS to be hired through Kelly Education's own application and screening process. For now, the roughly 2,000-person gap between what the district says it needs and what it has hired leaves classrooms across Baltimore County leaning on the same teachers, administrators and support staff already stretched thin.
