Campbell River School District (SD72) Superintendent Tom Longridge says the district has enough teachers to fill all the new positions required by the province.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was drafted after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the provincial government in its lengthy dispute with the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF).
The provincial government signed that MOU in March, sparking a hiring spree that has not been seen in B.C. schools for well over a decade.
While some districts have experienced “some recruitment and retention challenges, especially for specialist positions and replenishing teacher-on-call lists,” according to a Ministry of Education statement last week, SD72 hasn’t had a problem, Longridge says.
“We are fortunate in that we are a desirable district and location,” Longridge says.
“We’ve hired 30 new teachers from all over – from in province and out of province and beyond.”
While some of those hires did come from the SD72 on-call list, Longridge says they look to be in pretty good shape in that regard, as well.
“That’s something we’re also looking at,” Longridge says.
“I think we’re okay right now, but it’s definitely something that as we move forward and see what that ends up looking like, we may have to look to expand our TOC list.”
They’re not doing that as of yet, Longridge says, because while they need some teachers in reserve on a TOC list, they don’t want that list to be too long.
“That’s something we’re always aware of and sometimes it depends on how many you need at any given time.
“Quite often there are events that occur that take more (teachers) than others, so you have to balance the overall level of need and make sure that everybody who is on the list can get some work,” Longridge adds.
Longridge says he doesn’t have the breakdown of which schools required how many new teachers, but thinks it was “pretty across the board, because the language of the MOU was across the board.”
And it wasn’t just classroom teachers that grew in number because of the agreement.
Educational assistants, teacher librarians, ESL and ELL teachers and other “non-enrolling” supports were increased as well, Longridge says, “to give students the supports they need.”
The first day of school this year in SD72 is next Tuesday, Sept. 5.