The Sunshine Coast School District (SD46) has seen a “significant” reduction in its fail to fill positions this year, and is actively hiring to fill vacant positions and bolster its on-call staff lists.
At the start of the previous school year, between September and December of 2022, there were a total of 961 fail-to-fill roles for teachers and education assistants in SD46. During the same time period of the current 2023/24 school year, there were 567 fail-to-fills, a reduction of 41 per cent. The reduction includes 207 positions for teachers and 187 for education assistants that were filled, a difference of 68 and 29 per cent respectively.
Of the 98 fail-to-fills for teachers in the first three months of the 2023 school year, the school board heard there were 2,060 requests to fill positions. “Basically, we’re filling 95.2 percent of every vacancy that needs to be filled amongst our teaching positions,” an update from the human resources department said at the Jan. 11 school board meeting. “The impact in the classroom is obviously significant.” The superintendent’s report in the meeting’s agenda also noted the impact on the “workload and morale of other staff in the school when staff are absent.”
The presentation said the fail-to-fills average out to about one teacher per day in the system. Seven more teachers teaching on call (TTOCs) are currently being hired to further reduce the number of unfilled positions.
Just before Christmas, the district invited TTOCs to share whether they are interested in working as casual education assistants (EA) when they’re not sent out as TTOCs. This could help address the ongoing challenge of EA fail-to-fill positions.
.png;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)
.png;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)
