A shortage of casual employees to fill in for education assistants (EAs) who are sick has Tri-City public schools scrambling to ensure special needs students are supported in the classroom.
There have been days in recent weeks where as many as 20 qualified EAs couldn’t be found to fill in temporarily for regular staff, putting a strain on the system because teachers and full-time EAs have to be moved around to fill the gaps.
“This is a really significant problem, it’s almost of epidemic proportions,” said Ken Christensen, president of the Coquitlam Teachers' Association. "There’s just no EAs to hire. There’s a huge supply side problem and we’re competing for a very small pool."
This year, the school district increased the number of education assistant positions and now has 442 EAs working in local schools. But finding temporary replacements to fill in when they are away is a challenge.
According to Christensen, one school was short-staffed on EAs for all but two days since mid-September, resulting in stress and, sometimes, work left undone when the skill development teacher, whose job it is to plan for her students’ special needs and direct the EAs, has to fill in.
CUPE Local 561 president Dave Ginter, whose union represents EAs, agrees the shortage is a problem and says his union is working with the province on the issue.
EAs do a variety of work, from supporting teachers in the classroom, to helping students with social skills and personal care and hygiene, and the job can be stressful. More needs to be done to make the job more attractive, Ginter told The Tri-City News.
“Here’s the real shortage: It’s males,” said Ginter. “You need males for toileting the older students.
"It’s mostly around the money issue,” he said, speculating that men are not attracted to the $26-an-hour pay, especially if they are their family's breadwinners.
It’s a problem that’s facing all B.C. school districts and Douglas College can’t graduate students fast enough.
“We’re all working to try and get as many people graduated as possible,” said Lori Woods, a co-ordinator with the Disability and Community Studies Department at the Douglas' Coquitlam campus.
She said EAs are snapped up by employers the minute they graduate — sometimes before they finish the diploma program.
“It used to be part-time [work to start] and they had to work up. Now they land in a permanent position quickly,” said Woods, whose program typically graduates 60 students a year.
While finding replacements to cover sick days becomes a challenge, SD43’s director of human resources said the schools are dealing well with the situation. No children with special needs have had to be sent home because of lack of staffing — as has been reported in other districts — although Randy Manhas admits there have been some challenging days.
“You come in worrying," he told The Tri-City News. "It’s really hard to gauge. The one thing I do feel confident is we’re are doing quite well comparatively."
SD43 benefits from being considered an employer of choice, he said, and the district is constantly recruiting.
“What we won’t do is lower our standards,” he said.
As for parents, most are working with their own schools to get EA support and the president of the District Parent Advisory Council, Craig Woods, said that while they have concerns, parents “remain hopeful” knowing that the district works openly with them.
Meanwhile, SD43 is also experiencing a shortage of teachers on call (TTOCs) who fill in for sick employees. Manhas said there are times when subs can’t be found to fill in and, when that happens, it’s up to other personnel in the school, including administrators and special resource teachers, to fill in for the missing teacher.
On one day in October, for example, 30 callouts for TTOCs went unfilled.
He says it’s a problem that could get worse as the flu season is in full swing and one that all districts are facing. The answer, he said, is post-secondary institutions graduating more qualified teachers.
