Despite a provincewide teacher-hiring frenzy, Burnaby schools have attracted enough full-time teachers to get the job done this year, according to school district officials.
It’s only when those teachers get sick that local schools could run into problems.
“The only issue that we’re concerned about, really, is the TOC (teacher on call) list and ensuring that we have enough TOCs,” said Richard Per, the district’s new assistant superintendent in charge of human resources, "but we think we’re going to be fine.”
A Supreme Court of Canada ruling last November restored limits on class sizes, the number of special needs students that can be in a class and the minimum number of specialist teachers – like teacher librarians – required in schools.
Provisions around those things had been negotiated into B.C. teachers’ collective agreement and then illegally stripped from the contract by the B.C. Liberal government in 2002, the court found.
The ruling unleashed a wave of teacher hiring beginning last year, with the British Columbia Teachers Federation estimating it would take about 3,000 new positions to get schools in line with the new/old reality.
In Burnaby, Per estimates the district will fill a total of about 50 new full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions as a result of the ruling.
Despite stiff competition from other districts, most of those spots have been filled, according to the assistant superintendent, with mostly only part-time positions still left to cover.
“This year we might have a slightly harder time because there’s more competition for full-time teachers, but we haven’t run into any walls at this point,” he said.
The district is in a good spot because it has a good reputation and it got off to an early start last year, according to Per.
“We did an absolute ton of hiring last year and, of course, when the Supreme Court decision came down, we kind of upped our hiring because we could see what was going to happen,” he said. “We tried to keep up, but even so, we’re still going to be very tight with our TOCs.”
The district hired 300 TOCs between August 2016 and August 2017, but many slid directly into positions that came up in the district, some were hired by other districts and others aren’t available to sub every day, according to Per.
Last year, the district spent $300,000 less on substitute teachers than projected because there simply weren’t enough TOCs to fill in for every teacher absence.
Local schools could run into similar problems this year unless the district can keep between 280 to 300 fully available teachers on its sub list, according to Per.
All in all, however, Burnaby is doing no worse than most years when it comes to having all its staffing in place, he said.
“We still have positions that have to be filled, but it’s no different than we have in any other year,” he said. “We always get surprises. …There’s always the first couple weeks of the school year where we’re finalizing all the bits and pieces and positions.”
