Reducing Agency Spend: How MSPs Help Schools Optimize Workforce Costs

Nationwide staffing shortages are stretching schools thin. So when budget season comes, many schools find themselves adding up a host of staffing agency invoices. You brought in a staffing partner to help get this under control, so why do the invoices keep growing instead of shrinking? The issue isn’t a lack of effort. It’s that most MSP models are built to fill seats, not lower your total cost of contingent labor.

Filling Seats Isn’t the Same as Fixing Your Budget

Most traditional MSP models focus on how many empty classrooms they helped cover, and how fast. It’s not trivial work. Data shows that 50 percent of public schools report feeling understaffed and more than 425,000 teaching positions nationwide, about 1 in 8, are either unfilled or staffed by teachers without full certification, so the need to fill gaps is real. Plus, data on turnover costs shows that districts spend somewhere between $12,000 and $25,000 for every teacher who leaves, once you count recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity. These factors build up the pressure, and for many schools, it leads to greater reliance on traditional contingent labor sources. The problem is that only prioritizing fills tends to act as a band-aid, and it’s not always by accident, since a model that profits off fast fills has no real reason to shrink your dependence.

Why Squeezing Bill Rates Backfires

Government data shows that the average wages for substitute teachers rose from $15.61 an hour in 2019 to $22.32 an hour in 2025, partly due to increased competition for a shrinking candidate pool. For many schools, squeezing bill rates feels like the most logical move to curb these rising costs. But it usually backfires. Push your rates too far below market, and you go from saving money to losing talent to competitors. You also potentially expose yourself to slower fills, more no-shows, and less qualified people standing in front of your students. Think of squeezing the rate being like holding water in your hand. The harder you squeeze, the less you retain.

The Fix: Redesign, Don’t Just Refill

A better fix isn’t cheaper vendors or better negotiation. It’s a workforce model that handles contingent staffing as a symptom, not a treatment. You don’t just want cheaper fills. What’s more useful is a redesigned model that reduces your reliance. A successful, forward-thinking MSP partner knows how to get you there, whether that means helping you maximize your internal capacity or helping you set a staffing sequence to find the most optimal fill for each opening.

What a Sustainable Staffing Model Looks Like

A workforce model built to reduce demand should prioritize helping you find internal fills, consolidating all your workforce data, and determining when to bring in outside help. Putting this into practice can include:

• An internal substitute pool. Instead of defaulting to outside agencies, you build a pool of trained, district-employed floats who already know your schools, your curriculum, and your students. They cost less than agency placements and tend to stick around longer because they’re actually part of your team.
• Internal redeployment for specialized roles. Implement a system that allows cross-school redeployment of specialists, like a speech-language pathologist or school psychologist, when needed. Pulling from one of your own helps you avoid agency premiums.
• Demand forecasting to remove guesswork. Your own absence data (flu season spikes, professional development days, special education caseload swings) is more predictive than most districts realize. Planning around it lets you staff proactively instead of scrambling for every callout.
• Retention as a staffing strategy, not a reaction. Every teacher or paraprofessional you keep is one less contingent placement you need next year. Mentorship opportunities, clear career pathways, and manageable workloads should all be built into your staffing model. This can improve morale and retention, which should in turn reduce your need for contingent labor.

None of this happens by accident. It requires collaboration and a strong partnership with an innovative MSP partner.

A Different Kind of Partnership

Most traditional staffing or MSP models treat every vacancy as a transaction to close. But how does a model that treats a symptom, and not the cause, protect your best interests?

Sunburst Workforce Advisors tailors staffing solutions that help you find the optimal mix of internal and external labor, because your success matters more than ours.

Want to see what an MSP partnership with Sunburst would look like at your school? Connect with our team today.