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Desperate times: Northern students feeling pinch as Frontier School Division short 25 teachers

Unfilled teaching positions leave some students without a permanent teacher and force educational assistants and temporary teachers to head up classrooms.
Chief Superintendent Reg Klassen[2019]
Frontier School Division chief superintendent Reg Klassen

A school division that stretches across Northern Manitoba and includes several remote and isolated communities is dealing with a teacher shortage described as “desperate.”

“The staffing shortage that we are encountering is more significant than we have ever had,” Frontier School Division superintendent Reg Klassen said Oct. 4. “We typically start a school year one or two, or maybe as high as four of those positions unfilled and find a way to make it work.

“But this year we are entering the school year with well over 20 staff teaching positions unfilled, so that is very, very significant.”

A total of 42 schools make up the division, with many of those schools in Northern Manitoba and in remote and isolated communities, and Klassen said he estimates that as many as 80 per cent of FSD students identify as Indigenous.

At last count, Klassen said there were 25 unfilled teaching positions in the division which has left some students without a permanent teacher to start the school year, and not knowing when and if they will even get a permanent teacher at all this year.

“Really what we are doing is just scrambling at the moment, because if you’ve got, for example, a Grade 3 class with no teacher, then we are working with either an educational assistant in the class, or a temporary teacher who doesn’t have a teaching degree, or a teacher that is working with the EAs and managing multiple classrooms.

“It’s highly, highly stressful on the system.”

He said he is already watching that stress play out in some schools as staff are stretched thin, and the division will also have to analyze how the school year proceeds in terms of student success.

“We’re seeing that stress play out for sure, and we are going to have to measure as we go along how it plays out with some students not having a trained teacher in the classroom,” Klassen said.

And with Manitoba schools being closed on and off for the last two-and-a half-years due to the pandemic, Klassen said this could be yet another blow to students just trying to get a proper education in Northern Manitoba.

“Many students have not been in class in the last two years anywhere near where they should have been,” he said. “And many northern and remote Indigenous communities have been closed down to fight COVID outbreaks in communities.

“So to have the students back now and not have a full complement of teachers is a very serious issue.”

FSD, according to Klassen, is now using an “all hands on deck” approach to recruit more teachers, but he said he knows it can be difficult to convince some to come to Northern Manitoba.

“We’ve hired a full-time recruitment officer, we are spending money on advertising, and we are looking at ways to offer a $5,000 signing bonus to some who will take a position,” he said.

“When it comes to recruitment it is all hands on deck, because we are that desperate.”

He also hopes that current regulations in Manitoba could be looked at, because some who have the qualifications to teach in other provinces don’t have what is required to teach in Manitoba, giving them even fewer reasons to make a move to Northern Manitoba, and meaning they would be paid less if they took a teaching job anywhere in this province.

“So why would someone come here from another province?” Klassen asked.

During a Sept. 28 press conference, Education Minister Wayne Ewasko briefly touched on the teaching staff shortages in Northern Manitoba.

Ewasko did admit that differences in teaching degree requirements are likely keeping some from moving to this province to teach, and said that the province would see what can be done.

“We're taking a look at that as far as the different certification reviews of what's being accepted and what's not,” Ewasko said.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the government of Canada.

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