REGINA – A teacher who recently spent time working in northern Saskatchewan is raising the alarm bell over how much he was paid.
Cory MacDonald responded to a posting online and drove out from Nova Scotia to the northern village of Green Lake, Sask. to fill an emergency position when another teacher had to leave unexpectedly last October.
However, his accreditation was delayed meaning he missed out on “a substantial amount of money”.
“A teacher had left the community in haste without prior notice. They needed a teacher as soon as possible,” MacDonald told Global News from Petawawa, Ont., where he now resides.
The education ministry granted him a probationary teaching certificate but it took three-and-a-half months for his permanent certificate to be issued.
As soon as it was granted, MacDonald was bumped up from a class three to a class six, which is a salary increase of about $14,000 per year – and he says he was not retroactively paid.
The ministry said any salary negotiations are between the school divisions and the teachers and wouldn’t comment on MacDonald’s case specifically, other than to say his story sounds unusual.
“Typically a person who is coming from another province can have a certificate within two weeks,” said Trevor Smith, director and certifying official with the education ministry.
MacDonald said he had his paperwork in to the ministry within a couple of weeks; however, the Northern Lights School division told Global News that wasn’t the case, suggesting it took a “couple of months”.
An education policy researcher says if someone is already in the classroom teaching, the process should be simpler.
“Something like this should not be happening very often and if it is happening more frequently and perhaps more people will end up coming forward then it becomes even more imperative to draft a good policy on this,” said Michael Zwaagstra, with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
According to the education ministry, MacDonald was one of about 350 teachers granted a probationary certificate during the last year.
“It can kind of sour the experience when you basically can’t afford to make a go of it,” said MacDonald.
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