With flu season just around the corner, School District 43 is keeping its fingers crossed that it has signed up enough substitute teachers.
“We are in really good shape right now, as a good as anyone could hope to be,” said Randy Manhas, SD43's director of human resources.
Unlike other school districts that are scrambling for staff, SD43 has hired all of the 181 teachers needed to fulfill the collective agreement and has created a list of teachers teaching on call (TTOC) of up to 250 names for fill-in staff, although that will likely change as the weeks go by.
“Since January of last year, we’ve been anticipating what’s been coming our way, we’ve been working to increase our TTOC numbers," Manhas said. "Primarily, we’ve gotten a lot of teachers in other districts who want to come to Coquitlam.”
Among the teachers who want to work in Tri-City public schools are those who were teaching in private schools, in other districts and even working overseas, Manhas said.
“We’re looking for good, qualified teachers. Tri-Cities is such an amazing community for people to live in,” he noted, adding that housing affordability is still better than in Burnaby and Vancouver, and that could be one of the factors for teachers wanting to work even on-call in this district.
Things could change in a matter of weeks, however, as other districts may be in a position to offer full-time contracts at the same time SD43 could be snapping up teachers for more full-time staff as classes become organized and gaps are revealed.
“Again, even at times, even 250 [TTOC] is not enough,” Manhas said.
With the fall flu season as soon as a few weeks away, the district could face challenges depending on the severity.
But for now, he’s hopeful the district has a large enough staffing complement to meet the needs.
The district had projected a decline in the number of students for this school year but won’t have confirmed numbers until early October.