TeachStart reviews

1) It Does Not Pay Well OR Fairly. The Pay is exploitative. In a Long-Term Sub Position, the company has you doing the Exact Same Job as the other Contracted Teachers and pays you SIGNIFICANTLY Less to do so. Keep in mind, a long term sub position involves grading, lesson planning, parent teacher conferences, etc... You are doing every aspect of the job the other teachers are doing, but you are paid a great deal less AND you are given less than half the PTO/Sick Days. For example, Teachstart only gives you 3 days PTO (and paid holidays, but the teachers are also getting that) And where I was working at, the teachers got 11 Days PTO that I did not get. Additionally, they only give you about one week for Winter Break, even if you are in a long term sub position, you Do Not get the same breaks as the rest of the staff. This company is Extremely Stingy with paid time off and with holiday breaks. Even if you are assigned a school with 2 weeks spring break, they will make you work one of those weeks. 2) Do Not Be Fooled when they say they base your salary off of 50,000/year. They are trying to act like they pay you more than they do. First of all, the most recent Teacher's Strike won Unionized Teachers 60,000/year, so you are already underpaid. Secondly, in reality, you are paid 3000/month After Taxes. Thirdly, they Do Not pay you for the summer months, so be sure you are saving so you can support yourself during that time. Finally, if you do Scholar+, you will need to pay about 300$ per class to Alliant + a 50$ clearance fee to apply. They are Very Evasive in giving you these numbers when you sign the contract.

- Unsalaried substitutes get paid more which is frustrating. Before-tax, you earn $211 a day, other substitutes earn between $250-350 (from experience meeting other subs) - You can only use sick days if you've been employed for 90 DAYS. If you get sick before that time, you need to use PTO (if you have it) or not get paid. Absolutely insane and ridiculous, especially working in schools. - You can only earn up to three PTO days (24 hours) - The material taught in training rarely works at the schools you get placed in: schools and their students can have challenges/difficulties that can't be solved with what we're trained on. - Have to commute up to an hour and if an assignment is up to 59 minutes away you need to accept it or not get paid. You could also have over an hour commute home. The commute should be capped at 30 minutes, especially with gas prices + traffic. - Some people are still doing day-to-day subbing after a month, even though the goal is for long-term placements - Some substitutes have to work a full 8 hours while others don't. You have to get lucky with your assignment/school if you want a work-life balance. - You'll agree to an assignment, then get to the school and they put you in a different class/subject. - Arriving within the time frame provided by Scoot to find out that you have over 30 min to an hour to kill before school begins. Arrival times need to be updated for some schools. MOST IMPORTANT: the system to get an assignment is frustrating. If you don't get one the day before, you need to be awake by 6am to press "ready to work" in the Scoot app and wait for a phone call between that time and 6:30am. If you don't get an assignment, you could STILL get called after 6:30am, up until 7:30am. I fully believe that substitutes don't need to call in, we should be contacted. Schools don't usually open until 8-9am, why do we need to be up, awake, and "dressed" by 6am? Sleep, who?