The ongoing teacher shortage in northern B.C. means that some teachers are effectively having to work two jobs to make ends meet, to the detriment of the most vulnerable students.
Prince George District Teachers Association president Daryl Beauregard read a letter at School District No. 57 (SD57) public board meeting Tuesday evening detailing the impact the lack of staffing is having in schools.
The letter was written by a third-year learning assistance teacher, who said instead of providing the learning assistance programming she was developing for her students, she was forced to spend most of her time providing classroom coverage for absences.
“I spent more and more time last year covering classes for absent teachers than I did doing my own job," the teacher writes.
“I was extremely late in getting my work done because I was managing two jobs and not very well. I became increasingly frustrated and discouraged by what was happening. Classroom teachers became frustrated with me and the sporadic services they could no longer count on.”
She said she felt so badly about the negative effect this had on vulnerable learners and the pressure was so great, she considered leaving the teaching profession.
Although she felt prepared to come back to her role in September, hopeful the situation would improve, she still found herself continually pulled away and recently spent six days in a row covering for absent teachers.
“I was providing coverage every single day instead of doing my job,” writes the teacher, adding that learning assistance students have not received the support they need because she has not had time to provide direct services to those students.
“Teachers are overwhelmed, and the students are suffering.”
Beauregard said he’s been talking about statistics regarding the teacher shortage for a number of years and wanted to read that letter to the board because it brings a personal perspective to what is happening in schools.
While the teacher shortage has been ongoing for about six years, Beauregard said this year and last year were probably the most challenging.
To fill vacancies, SD57 has and is hiring a lot of casual and replacement staff of mostly uncertified teachers who are available part-time.
An ad seeking uncertified teachers on call and casual education assistance was posted to the districts’ website this October.
“Sometimes we could have, like today, only one unfilled classroom. A month ago, we had 50 or 60 unfilled classrooms, so it does vary quite widely,” noted Beauregard.
He said, as the letter writer illustrates, what tends to happen is that specialized support teachers like learning assistance teachers, counsellors, librarians or resource teachers are taken off their designated roles and placed in classrooms because there’s just nobody else.
“What that means for students who have identified needs for extra support, they are just not getting it.”
Beauregard noted that one of the issues is that British Columbia is not training enough teachers to replace those that are retiring, a problem which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I believe that when we saw COVID-19 hit, like many other parts of our economic sectors, they decided it was time to fully retire,” said Beauregard.
“But when we had a very, very limited supply of training for new teachers to enter the profession, that just piles up.”
Beauregard said the problem is even worse in northern B.C. further away from major centres like Prince George.
“There are schools which are entirely staffed, to the north, with uncertified teachers,” he said, adding that attracting additional teachers to British Columbia has also been nearly impossible due to low wages and a high cost of living in the province.
“For quite some time, teachers in British Columbia were some of the lowest paid teachers in Canada, we had some improvement with this recent contract but still, there's some gaps.”
Beauregard said that faced with this ongoing problem SD57 has been doing good things.
“They've never stopped recruiting and hiring, senior management that was covering classes themselves when they are vacant, and they fully understand and share our concerns,” he said.
“The solution is beyond Prince George because it is the entire northern region that is really adversely affected. What I would like is the new minister of education to sit down with the presidents of the union in the north who are experiencing these impacts of the teacher shortage.”
