B.C. teachers' union putting pressure on government to solve school staff shortages

The BC Teachers' Federation has rolled out an advertising campaign to push the government to take action on staff shortages.

The TV and radio ads are an effort to show the impact these shortages have on students, particularly "vulnerable students, the students who need the most help," according to the union president Clint Johnston.

Those kids get support from what are called "non-enrolling specialists," he explains, saying these teachers aren’t responsible for an entire class but instead support kids with "whatever they need to make sure they can achieve."

And Johnson says these are the educators who get called on to cover when a school is short-staffed.

"They're often the first ones to get pulled and put in a classroom," he says.

According to the union, 20,000 teachers and 7,000 teacher’s assistants will be needed over the next 10 years to keep up with growing enrollment.

BCTF hopes the ads will put pressure on the government to come up with a concrete plan to address the issues that they say are both burning out teachers and negatively impacting students.

Some things being suggested to help with staffing are a loan forgiveness program for teacher education candidates, more incentives for rural workers, and the creation of permanent teacher-on-call contracts within schools to provide consistent coverage for staff absences.

According to the Education Ministry, it's actively developing a workforce plan to recruit, hire, train and retain staff for the province's schools.

“While our full-time teaching and support staff workforce totals over 56,000 in B.C., the tight labour market is challenging us all,” said Minister Rachna Singh.

She also noted that funding has been committed for a second cohort of teachers through UBC’s rural and remote teacher education program next year. It allows students who live in a rural or remote area to become certified teachers without having to relocate to a new community to attend university.

The ministry has also created hiring incentives which it says resulted in the hiring of 50 additional certified teachers to work in northern, rural and remote communities. Another $500,000 has been pledged to continue to offer these incentives, according to the province.