Hiring guideRead at source, 29 September 2026

How to Hire Substitute Teachers: Build the Pool Before the Absences

To hire substitute teachers, start the pipeline months before you need coverage, because the state permit and background clearance usually take longer than the recruiting. Then advertise the daily rate, the grade levels and how assignments are offered, recruit retired teachers, recent graduates and parents in your own attendance area, keep the mobile application to four or five questions, and text every applicant the same day with the next step in the permit process.

Who you are actually hiring

Substitute teachers are a large, part-time, mostly local workforce. BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 count 556,100 short-term substitute teachers in 2025, projected to reach 567,000 by 2035 (growth of 2.0%), with about 65,000 openings a year. The BLS, May 2025 median annual wage for the occupation was $41,670. BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education.

That wage figure describes people who work as substitutes as their main occupation. Most of the people you will hire are not in that group. They are retired teachers who want two or three days a week, parents who want school-hours work, graduates deciding whether to teach, and paraprofessionals who already know your buildings. The job ad has to speak to people with other things in their week.

The permit sets your timeline

Substitute requirements are set by each state and vary by state, so check your own education department before you write the ad. Two examples show the pattern:

• California: the Emergency 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit requires a bachelor's or higher degree from a regionally accredited college or university, which the Commission says also satisfies the Basic Skills Requirement from 29 June 2024, plus fingerprinting. The holder may substitute no more than 30 days for any one teacher during the school year in general education, and no more than 20 days for any one teacher in a special education classroom. The employing agency keeps a Statement of Need on file.
• Pennsylvania: a day-to-day substitute permit requires at least a bachelor's degree, background clearances and legal authorization to work in the United States, and the state tells candidates to contact the district where they want to substitute because the process varies by district.

In both states the district is part of the paperwork, which means your recruiting is really two jobs: getting the application, and walking the candidate through permit and clearances fast enough that they are still interested when they are cleared.

Where to find substitute teachers

The best substitutes usually live inside your attendance boundary. They know the schools, they can take a call at 6 a.m. and be in a classroom by 7:45, and they are not searching job boards. These are the pools worth working, in rough order of how quickly they convert:

• Retired teachers and staff. Your own retirees are the first call. Check your state retirement system's rules on post-retirement work before you promise a schedule.
• Paraprofessionals and classroom aides who hold a bachelor's degree. They already have clearances and know the students. See our teacher aide job description for how that role is written.
• Parents in the district. School-hours work with no evenings is the offer, and Facebook is where local parents are.
• Recent graduates and education students who want classroom time before committing to a credential program.
• Career changers with degrees who want to test teaching without leaving their current job.

Some districts contract coverage out to a substitute staffing firm. That moves the recruiting to the firm, but it does not change who the candidates are or where they spend their time.

How to recruit substitute teachers with social ads

Recruiting substitute teachers is a local awareness problem more than a search problem. Most of the people above have never looked for substitute work because nobody asked them. A Facebook or Instagram ad shown to adults within driving distance of your schools does the asking.

Employment ads on Meta run in the Employment special ad category: you cannot target by age, gender or ZIP code, and location targeting needs at least a 15-mile radius. You cannot aim an ad at "retirees," so the creative has to do that work. A line such as "Retired teacher? Pick your days" finds its audience without targeting it.

Two timing windows matter. Build the pool in late summer, before the first absences, and again before winter break, when illness spikes and some of your fall substitutes have taken long-term assignments or left.

What the substitute teacher job ad must say

A substitute candidate checks three things before anything else: the daily rate, how much choice they have over days and schools, and what it takes to get cleared. Put all three in the first lines. Then add the grade levels, whether long-term assignments pay more, the minimum number of days you expect a month (if any), and how assignments are offered: by phone, text or an absence-management app.

Headline options that work for this role:

• Substitute teachers: pick your days and your schools
• Retired teacher? Your classroom still needs you, on your schedule
• Bachelor's degree? You can substitute in [District] this fall

Fill in the real rate before the ad runs. An ad without a rate reads as low pay.

Screening questions for a mobile application

Every extra field costs completions. For substitutes, four or five questions are enough to route people, and only the first is a knockout:

• Do you hold a bachelor's degree or higher? (Knockout only where your state requires one, as California and Pennsylvania do.)
• Do you already hold a substitute permit or teaching certificate in this state?
• Which days of the week could you usually work?
• Which grade levels would you take: elementary, middle, high school, special education?
• When could you start the permit and clearance process?

Leave transcripts, references and clearances for the step after the first conversation. Asking for them in the ad's application is the fastest way to lose the parent who applied from a phone in the pickup line. Our guide to pre-screening questions covers what not to ask.

Best way to recruit substitute teachers: speed after the apply

The best way to recruit substitute teachers is to shorten the gap between "I applied" and "I'm cleared." Text the applicant within minutes with the next step, the orientation date and the documents they will need. Then keep texting through fingerprinting and permit processing, because that is where most substitute applicants go quiet. Boostpoint Connect sends an instant text when someone applies through Boostpoint Attract, runs automated text sequences you set up for the job, and gives your team a shared two-way inbox for replies. Our recruiting text message templates include follow-up wording you can adapt.

What it costs to recruit substitute teachers on social

The Teacher / instructor family in Boostpoint's 2026 benchmark had a median of $30.95 per applicant, with the middle half of campaigns between $16.60 and $56.74, a blended $25.13 and an 8% apply rate. The Behavioral & Education sector as a whole had a $27.50 median. Those are costs advertisers paid, for advertising only, and cost per applicant is not cost per hire.

The 8% apply rate is the number to work on. Across all 891 campaigns in the benchmark, campaigns converting 5-10% of clickers paid $23.13 per applicant and campaigns converting 20-35% paid $4.41. The apply experience explains 70% of the cost variation between campaigns. For substitutes, that means a short form on Facebook and the credential paperwork after the conversation. The full data is on our benchmarks page.

Keeping substitutes after the first assignment

A substitute who has a bad first day in a building with no lesson plan and no one to ask does not accept the second call. Give every new substitute a building contact, a written plan for the first assignment and a quick check-in text at the end of the day. Substitutes who become regulars at one or two schools are the ones who stay in the pool, and some become your next paraprofessional or teacher hires. For the support-staff side of the same pipeline, see our paraprofessional interview questions.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Emergency 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit leaflet (CL-505p); Pennsylvania Department of Education, Get a Permit to Substitute Teach in Pennsylvania; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 and BLS, May 2025 median annual wage (Substitute teachers, short-term, 25-3031); Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark. Read at source 29 September 2026.