As School District No. 46 (SD46)'s declining enrolment starts to seriously hit Coast high schools, resulting in teaching positions being cut, district teachers and students are in the midst of an emotional, seniority-based teacher placement process.
"We're in challenging times," said superintendent Deborah Palmer. "I recognize that people are feeling quite stressed about this. And our employees and our kids - they are our greatest assets and we're trying to do all we can to work in a collective way to try to be fair and equitable and ensure people feel valued."
Palmer said despite a misperception in the community that something new has happened this year, the district has long used a seniority-based post-and-fill system to staff schools, and further finessed the system three years ago to try to create maximum transparency and fairness as it braced for years of projected declining enrolment and cuts to teaching positions.
Three years ago, she said, the district realized that school-based staffing was resulting in more senior staff members losing their jobs in schools with higher student declines, while more junior members were hanging on to their positions.
"And so that didn't make sense to us," she said.
As a result, the district and the Sunshine Coast Teacher's Association (SCTA) developed a teacher placement evening, where staffing placements are determined through a telephone process. To set the stage for the staffing process, once principals have staffed their schools, the district takes the teacher seniority list and draws a line at the teacher with the most seniority whose position has been cut. The district informs everyone below that - 115 teachers this year - that they will be part of the teacher placement process. From there, based on seniority, teachers "bump" into positions for which they're qualified.
A number of rounds of staffing occur, she said, as teachers assume new positions and free up old positions. This year, the net job loss is anticipated to be between four and six per cent of district teachers, once the dust settles in September.
But students at Elphin-stone Secondary School are questioning "rules" which give maximum job choices and security to the district's most senior teachers, and which have resulted in their much-loved humanities teacher, Brian Topping, being "bumped" out of his long-standing job and into a different district position.
The students have mounted a petition, letter-writing and Facebook campaign to try to keep Topping at the school.
"Basically every student that Mr. Topping has wants to learn and wants to do good for him because he's just so excited and motivated and knowledgeable and passionate," said Elphinstone Grade 11 student Hannah Kellett, who dropped off the petition, signed by nearly half the school population, at the school board office last week.
Grade 11 student Caiti Parrell, who helped circulate the petition, said Topping is many Elphinstone students' favourite teacher.
"He's definitely number one," she said. "This is what we want and this is our education. It's not fair to us that this is being taken away from us."
Topping did not respond to Coast Reporter's interview requests this week.
Palmer said while she has looked into the situation, which was triggered when a more-senior district teacher's hours were cut due to a complex time-tabling dilemma,there are no easy fixes here for the students.
And while she commended the students for their efforts to have a voice in the situation, she stressed that in the context of declining enrolment, these heart-rending teacher displacements have already happened and will continue to happen.
"We've had a lot of very long-serving, experienced, loved-by-their-kids teachers displaced at the elementary level," she said. "But when you're eight, you don't have the wherewithal to sort out a Facebook page and get 500 postings and organize a petition."
At Elphinstone, the students are continuing to fight for Topping, and are arguing that teacher placement should be based on merit - which they feel he has in spades -rather than seniority.
But SCTA president Jenny Garrels said that a merit-based placement system is unlikely to work.
"Who's to say the teachers are good?" she asked. "Is it the results they get? Is it their popularity? Is it the extra-curricular things they do? It's so difficult to quantify."
Palmer agreed the key problem with a merit-based placement system is the challenge in quantifying it.
"Things like seniority and qualifications are the founding principles of organized unions, and the reason we have swung that way is because there was such a misuse of other things that people couldn't put their finger on," she said. "So as harsh as it feels sometimes, the way it is right now is more fair."
