Calling the current teacher shortage in the province a human resources “crisis,” the union that represents Prince George teachers has asked School District 57 trustees to remind government educators of the urgency of the situation which is having a negative impact on area schools.
Daryl Beauregard, first vice-president of the Prince George District Teachers Association, delivered that message at Tuesday’s board of education public meeting and he implored trustees to pressure their provincial colleagues to provide better salaries that will make B.C. schools more attractive to out-of-province teachers.
“This is a crisis, it’s been going on for three years but it’s really getting bad now,” said Beauregard. “Your human resources department works very hard to staff classrooms and to fill our TTOC (Teachers Teaching On Call) ranks. But there simply isn’t enough people to hire, they would hire them if they were there. We cannot get enough people to be interested in moving to British Columbia.
“(Education Minster Rob Fleming) simply needs to admit there’s a problem and he needs you to do that for him. If the minister admits there’s a recruitment problem and a teacher shortage, then the minister is obligated by the people of this province to solve that problem. It needs money.”
According to Beauregard, B.C. schools are funded $1,800 per student below the national average. That shortfall, as well as teacher salaries which rank near the bottom of the country, is crippling the ability of school districts to recruit teachers.
He told the board that in Prince George there are 13 full-time teaching positions which remain unfilled, with 16 additional vacancies anticipated. For the new semester which began this week there are three positions available for French immersion teachers, nine unfilled positions at elementary schools and four at secondary schools. Before June, he said an additional three secondary school teachers will be needed as well as two more in French immersion teachers and five non-enrolling support teacher jobs.
”These numbers are staggering because this hasn’t happened before,” Beauregard said. “Some of it is for positive reasons, we had 40 maternity leaves of staff this year. That’s something we want to celebrate. Then it occurred to me that our members’ babies will fill more than two new kindergarten classrooms and in the coming years we probably don’t the ability to recruit the teachers to staff it.
“The public and their (provincial) representatives need to push this government to fund our public education program to the national average and that includes enhancing the ability for districts to hire more people to fill the teacher shortage and that’s going to take making it more attractive for people to work here.”
According to the B.C. Teacher’s Federation, the province had the lowest starting salaries for teachers across the country and what it pays experienced teachers is the lowest west of Quebec, that despite B.C.’s cost of living being among the highest in Canada. In School District 57, teacher salaries in May 2019 ranged from $46,898 to $89,324.
“B.C. is not a cheap place to move to and it’s a province that has not been doing poorly economically for a long time,” said Beauregard.
SD 57 board chair Tim Bennett said the teacher shortage was discussed this past weekend at the B.C. School Trustees Association Northern Interior Branch meeting. The group sent a letter to Minister Fleming asking for permission to fast-track the licencing of teacher recruits from other provinces and also made a recommendation that recruitment become more of a priority for the minister. Bennett said the Prince George district has hired a full-time recruitment and retention officer and created recruitment videos for all of its regions.
“We have staff across the country at (job) fairs,” said Bennett. “The board is really proud of our HR department and our senior team for the work they’ve done to bring teacher to our district. We do have vacancies but these vacancies could be a lot more significant.”
Anita Richardson, who moved from Alberta in December to replace Rod Allen as SD 57 superintendent, says there is a wide wage discrepancy between the two provinces which adds to the difficulty B.C. schools are facing.
“Although Alberta has had wage freezes for quite a few years consecutively, they’re still significantly higher than B.C. right now,” said Richardson. “So there’s not a huge draw for teachers in Alberta to come to B.C. because working in Alberta on-call they still make a decent wage compared to what they would make full-time in B.C.”
Richardson said B.C. is not alone in its struggle to recruit teachers in French immersion, shop and specialty programs, which she says is a nationwide problem.
“The key thing for us is to keep supporting our staff, we need to make sure our voice is heard at a provincial level by supporting our trustees to get that message out to our ministry to make sure that’s a key a priority,” said Richardson.
“Here at home we have to make sure we are marketing Prince George as a great destination to come to work and providing examples of why people would want to locate to Prince George and why they would want to stay.”
B.C. teachers have been without a contract June 30, 2019. That collective agreement, retroactive to July 1, 2013 was ratified after a five-week provincewide strike which started in June 2014 and ended the following September – the longest teachers’ strike in B.C. history.
In November, teachers rejected mediator David Schaub’s recommendation of a three-year contract which would increases wages two per cent annually. The B.C. Teacher Federation says the teacher shortage demands bigger wage increases than other public sectors and also rejected the offer because the province wants to change the contract language on class size (the number of students in each class) and class composition (the number of special needs students in a classroom) and how that relates to specialist teacher ratios.
After a 15-year fight, those ratios were restored and 3,500 teachers were hired as a result of a November 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that determined the B.C. government acted illegally when it stripped collective agreement provisions around class size, composition, and specialist teaching ratios in 2002.The BCTF wants the new contract to provide class size and composition standardization in all school districts.
“The great irony is we needed 3,500 teachers virtually overnight and now we don’t have enough teachers to staff our classes when people are sick, and classes aren’t even filled in September in many cases,” said Beauregard. “So we’re going to those teachers we fought so hard to get back, to staff our vacant classrooms. Learning assistants, councillors, librarians - they’re going into classrooms maybe one or two days a week and our vulnerable students don’t have access to those people.”
The teacher shortage in the Prince George district, which also includes McBride, Valemount and Mackenzie, has drained the pool of TTOCs (commonly referred to as substitute teachers). Most of them are teachers who retired, some of whom planned to work occasionally as subs, and they are back working full time.
“Our unstaffed classrooms draw down that very small workforce, leaving our district far below capacity to respond to teacher absences,” said Beauregard. “Our system cannot sustain it.”
He says teachers are being overworked trying to cope with staff shortages and are breaking down, resulting in what he says is an unprecedented number of medical leaves which further exacerbates the problem.
The province spends $6.6 billion annually on education and Finance Minister Carole James said last week there will be no new money for teachers in the budget the NDP government will table on Feb. 18. BCTF president Teri Mooring said the union is discussing job action which could escalate to a strike vote.
