A large increase in school surpluses is expected at School District No. 46 (SD46) in part because of a shortage in educational assistants (EAs) and other support staff.
At a June 13 board meeting, SD46 Secretary-Treasurer Nicholas Weswick told trustees, “There are some staffing positions that we’ve been unable to hire, or that have not been replaced due to shortages in the workforce, in particular educational assistants,” which he said led to underspending for salaries. For example, $2,853,341 was budgeted for EA salaries for the year up to May, but that was underspent by $318,824.
Other factors contributing to the increase include what he called uncertainty about the Classroom Enhancement Fund and mid-year allocation of school transportation funding. The enhancement fund is a $330-million injection to the province’s annual education budget to hire 2,600 teachers as mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada.
While the surplus may be good for the district’s bottom line, Janice Budgell, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 801, raised the problem of shortages at the end of the meeting, telling trustees, “I know for our school district, this year has been one of the worst I think for having EAs not being replaced, custodians not being replaced.…Hopefully the province will look into that because … it does cause a lot of issues at the school level.”
With 500 employees, SD46 is one of the largest employers on the Sunshine Coast. “I’ve noticed a huge shift in the last five years and it seems like this year has been the worst for replacements,” Budgell told Coast Reporter after the meeting.
She said cost of living on the Coast, as well as the unpredictable nature of the on-call positions required for educational assistant positions at SD46, are to blame for the shortage. “EA workers, their hours are anywhere between 20 to 29 hours a week – it’s not a living wage,” she said. Budgell also noted that custodians require a Building Service Worker Certificate, something that she would like to see made more easily available on the Coast.
“A few years back the school district offered the building service workers course and they qualified a lot of people, and I think they hired every single person that came out of that course,” she said.
At a May board meeting, when trustee Christine Younghusband raised the question of whether the district was experiencing a shortage of teachers, generally, Paul Bishop, director of instruction at SD46, replied that it’s a “constant process of evaluating the staffing you have,” and mentioned retiring, transitioning to different positions and moving as factors. “We’re constantly looking for additional staff,” he said, especially for positions requiring specialty training.
