BCTF says province’s classrooms short 1,000 teachers

A month into the new school year, the head of the union representing B.C.’s teachers says districts across the province are still facing a staffing shortage.

BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) President Glen Hansman said the province still needs to hire about 1,000 teachers to make good on an agreement signed last spring.

That deal came in the wake of a historic Supreme Court of Canada ruling which set limits on class size and composition, and required the province to hire on more than 3,500 new teachers.

According to Hansman, the delay is having an effect on student learning with some programs being delayed and others regularly interrupted.

“Children with special needs or English language learners are regularly having their supports cancelled, or haven’t even started yet,” Hansman said.

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And the crunch could get worse, Hansman said, if B.C. is hit with a particularly bad flu season.

That’s because, according to Hansman, the 1,000 outstanding positions includes about 300 full contract positions, plus another 700 or so teachers on call who would normally step in to fill vacancies.

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“We’re seeing kids’ special ed programming being disrupted. We’re seeing principals, vice-principals, a lot of our members being pulled out of their regular teaching assignment and being put into classrooms.”

From Hansman’s perspective, the problem can’t be pinned on the government, but he said both the school boards and the province need to do a better job of attracting teachers.

To that end, he said the province should work to more aggressively attract out of province teachers, and revisit B.C. teachers’ pay scales which, according to the latest Statistics Canada data, are among the lowest in Canada.