Hiring of teachers in B.C. could soon speed up, after legal win for BCTF
Posted October 16, 2018 10:53 am.
Last Updated October 16, 2018 10:27 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — If your child is one of the many whose school is suffering a teacher shortage, you’ll be glad to hear teacher hiring in B.C. could soon speed up after a recent legal win for the BC Teachers Federation.
The ruling by an arbitrator decides that school boards have been in the wrong and have failed to hire enough certified teachers to come into line with class size and specialist requirements. In the Oct. 11 ruling, arbitrator Jennifer Glougie says “the fact remains that, for almost a decade and a half, teachers have been deprived of these important rights which the [Supreme Court of Canada decision] acknowledges were unconstitutionally removed from their collective agreement.”
Glen Hansman, BCTF president, explains when classroom teachers have been away due to sickness or other reasons, they haven’t necessarily been replaced with a teacher on call, so counsellors, teacher-librarians, or special education teachers have been tapped.
“Say sorry, you’re not going to do your regular job working with kids, working with small groups, with students with special needs, et cetera,” Hansman tells NEWS 1130. “You’re going to fill in in the classroom instead. And that was happening all the time last year.”
Hansman says the legal decision means hiring will have to speed up, with hundreds of jobs still unfilled. Swift action will need to begin over the next week or so, Hansman adds.
“We’re in the seventh week now of the second school year that the class size and class composition language is back,” Hansman explains. “It has resulted in thousands of more teaching positions in the system, working with students, which is wonderful, but we have still about 400 jobs that haven’t been filled.”
He says the shortages are still causing disruption to special education, such as in Chiliwack, whose school district could have hired “hundreds of people,” but did not until it was too late.
“So this passive approach that’s been taken by the province in assisting school districts in speeding up hiring needs to end, and school districts need to stop overlooking qualified, certified people that are available in the province,” he says.
The BCTF has called upon Education Minister Rob Fleming to send out a cease and desist letter to school districts, directing them to stop reassigning specialist teachers to cover jobs that can be done by teachers-on-call.
— with files from HanaMae Nassar
