In an effort to kick-start the hiring season for the division, Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras asked the School Board to fast track a contract with a substitute teacher employment agency.

Scoot Education is the agency in question and would be the recipient of the contract. Scoot created TeachStart, a fellowship program that provides salary and benefits to fellows who work as long-term substitute teachers while earning their teaching certification. 

The initiative would give RPS 15 vetted long-term substitute teachers that would be assigned to an existing teacher vacancy for the entire next school year, said Monika Haskins, the division's director of talent acquisition. They would also receive professional development while working.

“We see this initiative directly strengthening our pipeline for permanent qualified educators which will move us closer to our goal of zero teacher vacancies,” she said. 

The company would be paid $270 per day per substitute, which would come to $48,600 per teacher in a 180-day school year, and potentially make the contract worth $729,000 if all spots are filled.

Haskins shared that the division is currently at 93 teacher vacancies, up from her last presentation in August 2025 when there were 89 vacancies. 

But Board members were skeptical of the proposal, asking for evidence of the program’s effectiveness, how much the company would pay its employees and whether or not they will stay after their yearlong training, questions which administrators did not immediately have answers for. 

“This couldn’t be done in house?” asked Rizzi.

“Yes, it can be done in-house. … The value in this is it allows a little bit of relief off of our substitute specialists,” Haskins responded, adding that the company has a full team of folks who can cast a wider net to bring employees, who would be working for, paid and trained by TeachStart, in.

Ali Faruk (3rd District) asked about the company’s location in the District of Columbia.  

“Do you think they’ll be better at recruiting people from this area to be subs in RPS than we are?” he asked.

Haskins said they would be fully vetted and able to recruit better than RPS could. 

Kamras suggested to the Board that it sees the partnership as not a replacement, but rather an addition to the division’s hiring of substitute teachers and its Supporting and Empowering Educator Development program (SEED), which helps RPS employees obtain their teacher license for free. He emphasized that the division still does “not have a sufficient number of high quality substitutes and we still have vacancies.”

“If we were at zero, I would not bring this forward,” he said. He added that the contract is “neutral revenue” because the division would not be paying for the employees’ salaries.

Kamras was initially hopeful the Board would approve the contract at the April board meeting.

The superintendent later recognized that the administration was “not prepared for tonight” and offered to bring more detailed information the next day. 

Despite that, Board members still displayed hesitancy to the contract, and proposed removing it from the list of items the body was supposed to vote on during the April sessions.

The issue also touched upon the Board’s resistance to have first reviews and approvals grouped together.

“This does not give us enough opportunity to digest the information. Something like this, it’s extremely important for us to be able to take the time to ask questions, get feedback from the community,” said Board Chair Shavonda Fernandez (9th District). “I don’t feel like we’ve met the mark here.”

Contact Reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at vifatusin@richmonder.org