Straight answers for principals, business officials & teachers

You don't need an absence-management platform to work with us. Minnesota districts engage MNEDU as a Contracted Service Vendor under Object Code 300 (Purchased Services) — the same UFARS expenditure category your business office already uses for contracted programs, consultants, and outside services.

In practice: your business office sets MNEDU up as a vendor once (W-9, insurance certificate, background-check documentation — we provide the full packet); your building requests coverage directly from us by phone or email; and we invoice the district monthly as a purchased service coded to Object Code 300. It's a standard, audit-clean arrangement. Ask us for the one-page vendor packet to hand your school business official.

MNEDU is a teacher-owned collective, not a staffing agency. The big agencies optimize for fill rate — getting a body into a room. We optimize for instruction. Every specialist has subject expertise (Art, STEM, or Spanish), arrives with standards-aligned curriculum, is trained in active classroom management, and leaves the room cleaner than they found it. The person who answers your call has stood where your absent teacher stands.

We deliberately specialize in the rooms generalist subs struggle with most: Art, STEM, and Spanish. These are active, equipment-heavy, or language-dependent classrooms where "supervise and show a movie" fails fastest. Every daily specialist carries a "Sub-in-a-Bag" kit with ready-to-go, standards-aligned lessons in their subject.

Yes — it's half of what we do. For leaves of 10+ days, we hand-select a single dedicated instructor for the entire placement. They handle lesson planning, grading, and parent communication, and we align their instruction with your district's scope and sequence before day one, so students are on track when your teacher returns. See Long-Term Residencies.

Daily coverage runs across the Twin Cities metro — Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and surrounding suburban districts. Long-term residencies are available statewide. If you're outside the metro, contact us anyway; our coverage map grows district by district.

Daily coverage is billed at a flat daily rate; extended placements use our Weekly Residency rate, which for leaves of 4+ weeks typically comes in below standard agency daily rates stacked end to end. Email us the leave length and subject and we'll send a side-by-side comparison against your current agency's pricing within two business days.

Call us by 6:30 AM and we'll tell you immediately whether we can fill the room that day — no portal limbo, no unanswered postings. A human confirms, every time. For known absences (PD days, appointments, planned procedures), book as far ahead as you like.

Yes. Every MNEDU specialist holds at minimum a Minnesota Tier 1 short-call substitute license (many hold full professional licenses in their subject), and all staff complete BCA and federal background checks. We provide documentation to your HR office during vendor setup, and credentials for the specific specialist before any placement begins.

You need at least a Minnesota short-call substitute license — and if you hold a bachelor's degree in any field, you likely qualify and we'll walk you through the application. Practicing artists, engineers, and Spanish speakers without education degrees are exactly who we recruit; subject expertise is the hard part, and the licensure path is more accessible than most people think.

Three things. Curriculum: you're never thrown into a room empty-handed — every assignment comes with our ready-to-go subject kit. Respect: we're teacher-owned, which means pay, communication, and placement decisions are made by people who've done the job. Fit: we place you in your subject — artists in art rooms, makers in STEM labs — not wherever the algorithm has a gap. See open opportunities.