The St. Clair Catholic District School Board (SCCDSB) is looking to add to its workforce amid staffing challenges.
Director of Education Scott Johnson said the school board is "definitely" dealing with challenges of unfilled jobs, not as a result of retirements but a lack of occasional staff.
He said at a system level there are a small number of jobs that go unfilled each day, which can result in internal shuffling to make sure each class is supervised. One of the school board's strategies has been to move six newly hired educational assistants to different schools based on absenteeism.
Johnson said challenges with unfilled vacancies within the SCCDSB are relatively new, over the past couple of years. However, he also said staffing issues are a provincewide challenge.
One of the contributing factors for a shorter list of occasional staff this year is in relation to newly imposed provincial regulations. Educational staff are required to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or submit to regular antigen testing.
"A lot of retired people were on our list who chose not to participate in that process. So we ended up removing a bunch of people from our occasional list of employees because they were retiring and either didn't want to come back during a pandemic or didn't want to offer the attestation or proof of vaccination," said Johnson. "That made things a little more difficult for us and other boards."
Johnson said staffing concerns have been expressed to the Ministry of Education with a suggestion that could help.
"One of the things we think will be helpful is, last year we were allowing, across the province, retired staff to work up to 90 days as a retiree to cover off these jobs," he said. "This year, they are capped at 50 again and that definitely makes the work more difficult for us to get sufficient replacement teachers."
Meanwhile, the SCCDSB has hired 15 educational assistants over the last month or so and will continue the hiring process.
"Teachers and ECEs (early childhood educators) are a little bit more difficult because they're tied to the end of their academic training which is usually in the spring, so it's really hard for us to pick up new teachers at this point, which makes it difficult to add to the supply list," said Johnson.
From a leadership level, Johnson said the school board is "in good shape" and hasn't noticed an increase in the number of principals retiring this year compared to previous years. He also said the school board has a sufficient number of qualified teachers who would be able to step into a leadership role when necessary.
Although the Lambton Kent District School Board (LKDSB) has not experienced the same level of staffing challenges this year as the SCCDSB, it is somewhat felt on a year-to-year basis.
"While the province, I think, is having concerns, we by and large are able to accommodate our needs," said Superintendent of Human Resources Gary Girardi. "We continue to have confidence in our permanent and our occasional staff and we've had a challenging couple of years in terms of us being able to support students and our communities but we look forward to continue to do so."
Girardi said three principals within the LKDSB will be retiring in the new year but successors have already been appointed and the transitions have started. He said the number of principal retirees this year isn't larger than anticipated but does fluctuate based on many factors.