Substitute teachers across the district are getting more pay starting Monday after the Frisco ISD Board of Trustees approved incentives in an effort to retain them and reduce the shortage of subs in the district.

“It is very difficult to get subs across the area,” FISD chief human resources officer Pam Linton said in a Community Impact article. “Especially when the economy seems to be strong; it’s very difficult to find subs.”

Substitutes who work a full day on a Monday or Friday, the days that fewer substitutes work, will be paid $15 extra. Substitutes that work a half day on Mondays or Fridays will be paid just $7.50 more.

“We do a lot of subbing in the high schools and I feel getting extra dollars is always good,” substitute teacher Neelam Tiwari said. “It will also motivate our subs. It will motivate us to work more, more hours, and try to help the school.”

The new incentives also increase substitute pay from $80 to $100 a day for those with college degrees and from $90 to $110 a day for those with teaching certificates.

“I sub in this district and I sub in Prosper also,” substitute teacher Ann Collum said. “Last year Prosper paid more, but then they increased their pay in this district by twenty dollars at the beginning of the year and then I noticed that which is good for me which means I sub in this district more than I do in Prosper. The extra money for now that the incentives to be here on Friday and Monday because a lot of teachers miss Fridays and Mondays and in the spring there’s a lot of sports that coaches have to be out. I know that a lot of times we’re here on Fridays and Mondays and their scrambling for teachers to cover classes or subs to cover during their conference period because they just don’t have enough subs.”

For Collum, subbing in Frisco means more than the extra pay.

“There’s another incentive if you’re here over fifty percent of the time in a two week pay period, you get an extra hundred dollars so that could be an extra three hundred dollars a month which is a pretty good amount,” Collum said. “I’m a retired teacher and I live by myself so I can’t live just on a teacher retirement because it’s not enough to pay the bills so it will be great for me, but it’s only for April and May.”