The Simcoe County District School Board was hit particularly hard by declining enrolment, resulting in 105 teachers receiving redundancy letters. That represented 78.5 full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions.Kudos. This is responsible reporting, making sure that since coverage was given to the layoff / redundancy notices in the spring, a followup is done on how many are being called back. We tend to panic in the spring (particularly some of the federations' local folks) and then by the late summer and fall the situation is very different.
Now, the board has 53 redundancies (34.6 FTE). Any further callbacks will be dependent on further resignations or retirements.
That number is not typical for the board. Last year, for example, 35 redundancy letters were sent out and all the teachers were recalled.
Expect further callbacks in September and into October as well, once boards have a better idea of who shows up on the first day of school and do some final tweaking to the way schools are organized. This reorganization occasionally results in a few more callbacks.
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4 comments:
you're right ER - it's amazing how like clockwork every spring we here the same stories re: pink slips but never hear about the callbacks...or, the number of new teachers not able to get work, or, about the number of boards which have hiring freezes on even the occaisional teachers.
We have newly minted teachers in our family, and several friends who went back to get their teaching degrees and are SOL. One's heading to the USA, one to work in Outdoor Ed., and the rest are just being patient I guess.
Is the teaching shortage officially over?
Teaching shortage? It's been over for years in most parts of Ontario. However, it still exists in certain parts of the U.S. (largely parts that pay poorly and have bad working conditions), and the U.K. (ditto). Most new grads have to spend three or more years on the occasional teacher list (if they can get on) before landing a contract job, unless they want to work in Peel. Some band run schools also experience difficulty in attracting teachers. In spite of the poor prospects for employment, faculties of ed still attract full enrolments, and people are still off to Buffalo and Australia for teacher training.
Teacher Shortage Officially Over!
Now there's a headline we've not yet seen in Ontario(that I'm aware of).
I wonder if Faculties of Education are still accepting the same number of students. Somehow, taking their money and knowingly sending them out unlikely to get full-time work is really kind of underhanded.
Yes, the shortage has been over for at least three years, as RetDir notes above.
The headline hasn't been screamed from major media, but the Ontario College of Teachers mag pronounced the shortage dead very shortly after that became the case.
I have several former colleagues, friends still, who have recently been pushed off or jumped ship from journalism and gone into teachers' colleges. I've told all of them it's a brave choice considering they're facing years of occasional contracts, unless they're lucky or from several key demographics.
For what it matters, I didn't hype the staff reductions in my spring stories, and tempered my writing with the comment most teachers would likely be accommodated through callbacks.
Hugo
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