When Staffing Shortages Arise, Jersey City Public Schools Has Coverage in Place

Teacher vacancies can quickly turn into instructional gaps, especially when they continue long after the school year begins. Jersey City Public Schools (JCPS) has dealt with that challenge across its nine high schools, where hard-to-fill positions have included math, science, English, and world languages. At one point, district leaders estimated there were about 13 vacancies at just one school.

In Partnering to Address Teacher Shortages and Accelerate Learning, Jamie Morales, JCPS director of secondary education, and Ethan Norlander, supervisor of the secondary division, shared how the district combined Edmentum Courseware with EdOptions Academy’s New Jersey-certified teachers to build a flexible virtual model that can fill staffing gaps whenever and wherever they occur. Here’s how they did it, and six pieces of advice that they recommend to other districts.

1) Keep Courses Running With Live Virtual Teachers

Leaders at JCPS were clear: their first choice is to have a district-employed teacher in the classroom. “If we didn't need a vendor, we wouldn't have used a vendor,” Morales said. “We want every classroom to have its own teacher present and teaching.”

Unfortunately, that’s not always possible, and the longer positions remain unfilled, the more problems compound. Substitutes can supervise students but may not have the content expertise to effectively teach the courses, and JCPS needed to consistently provide quality instruction. They found a solution: virtual learning that ran inside the regular school schedule. 

Students in virtual instruction could stay in their high schools and follow the same bell schedule as their peers. A classroom monitor remained physically present, while an EdOptions Academy certified teacher delivered live instruction during the scheduled period. 

As Morales described, “If my class starts at 10:00, I did not have to make an adjustment to the bell schedule at the high school. That live teacher will be there at 10:00 and will remain with those students for 45 minutes. The bell sounds, the students go on to the next class.”

During the first year, virtual educators taught a wide range of Courseware courses at JCPS, including Spanish, English, French, physics, chemistry, biology, world history, electives, and AP® classes. That gave the district some peace of mind, knowing they have a staffing safety net that they can lean on whenever it’s needed in the future.

2) Create Staffing Flexibility While Recruitment Continues

When the school year began, the staffing needs continued to evolve. There were teachers who took leave earlier than expected or resigned after classes were already underway. And permanent educators can take months to be placed, Norlander recalled, sharing that some vacancies remained unfilled more than a month into the school year. But EdOptions Academy gave the district time to find a replacement without disrupting learning. 

“To have that class created, have it staffed by a certified teacher, have the students mapped into the system, have them rolled into the program itself at the school and then into the classes—it only took a few days, tops. That was it."

Notably, the model can easily be dialed back as needed. At Dickinson High School, students began the year taking Spanish virtually because the district had been unable to fill that position, but when a teacher was hired, the virtual teacher finished the marking period, records were transferred, and the district teacher took over the very next day.

JCPS had built something valuable: capacity that they could use when it was needed and tuck away when it wasn’t.

3) Use the First Year to Fix Operational Problems

JCPS is large and highly mobile, with close to 2,000 high school students enrolled in virtual courses at one point. Rosters initially had to be managed manually, creating headaches for administrators who were working through long enrollment lists only to find that students had already changed classes. The district also had to navigate differences in grading periods and school processes. 

Those problems became priorities for second-year adjustments, and the program became more streamlined when the model was adapted to fit the district.

• Auto-rostering connects enrollment more closely with the district’s student information system
• The virtual program reflects the district’s four marking periods rather than a semester structure

Norlander said auto-rostering “made our lives 10 times easier,” and described the second-year rollout as “much, much, much smoother.”

4) Build School-Level Support Around Virtual Instruction

It's administrators' responsibility to provide what students need, asserted Morales. Norlander added that infrastructure is key. "If you don’t have the infrastructure, the program is not going to get off the ground. And if it’s not off the ground somehow, it’s not going to go forward." Everyone had to do their part.

• Participating high schools created internal teams made up of staff who were already connected to the students. 
• Classroom monitors were able to log into classes, communicate with virtual teachers, and follow student activity.
• District leaders stayed close to the work as well, visiting classrooms and reviewing instruction. 

All of this made it possible to surface some ways to better align the instructional model with the district’s needs, and Edmentum quickly made those adjustments. 

5) Provide Intentional Oversight Around Virtual Instruction

At first, district leaders worried about students turning off their screens, using their phones, or failing to take virtual classes seriously. That did happen, to some extent, so JCPS responded by making virtual instruction more visible inside the school. 

• District and school administrators conducted learning walks in virtual classrooms
• School teams reviewed student data and intervened whenever students fell behind
• Weekly status reports enabled internal school teams to track progress more closely
• Families were informed about the virtual program and could access a parent portal
• Students attend orientations to learn how to use the platform before classes start

The combination of live teaching and school-based oversight gave students real-time interaction while keeping virtual classes anchored in their regular school day routines.

6) Ramp Virtual Instruction Up or Down as Staffing Needs Change

By the second year, the need for virtual instruction was reduced. At Lincoln High School, it dropped from more than 20 sections across several content areas to three sections in one area. But a biology teacher didn’t return as expected and Lincoln suddenly needed coverage again. Norlander said a virtual teacher was assigned within days.

That’s what makes the virtual program at JCPS sustainable. The district can keep recruiting their own teachers and reduce their reliance on virtual instruction, knowing that when another vacancy does arise, they’re set up to fill it immediately, keeping qualified educators consistently in place so students don’t miss a beat.

Build flexibility into your staffing strategy, inside the regular bell schedule, with Edmentum’s virtual learning options.