Ontario school boards dealing with higher teacher absence rates

School boards across the Greater Toronto Area are dealing with higher teacher absences driven by the dominant Omicron variant and some boards are struggling to fill those positions.

“We’ve seen an increase in staff absences due to COVID-19 and because of that our fill rate, the number of jobs we’ve been able to fill with an occasional teacher has gone down,” said Ryan Bird, a spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board.

Bird says another challenge is that the pool of occasional teacher’s may also be affected by COVID-19, or have chosen not to work because of the Omicron variant.

During the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, the TDSB reported that 8,820 elementary teacher jobs had to be covered. The board says 5,959 jobs were filled and 2,861 jobs were unfilled. 

At public high schools that week, 1,606 teaching jobs had to be covered. There were 1,373 jobs were covered while 233 were not. 

To cover the unfilled jobs, school boards are turning to other staff and administrators to fill gap. 

“We’re using all the strategies we can to make sure that students remain to be supervised whether its deploying staff from within in the school and we redeploy we can deploy central administrators and teachers and in cases we may have to use emergency replacements,” said Bird, who added the boards top priorities is that students are supervised and safe. 

The Durham District School Board (DDSB) tells CTV News Toronto the average fill rate was approximately 90 per cent, with a few days dropping to 85 per cent. The DDSB said today it had an overall fill rate of 95 person.

The Durham Catholic District School Board reports an average daily fill rate for secretary, teacher, Educational Assistant and Early Childhood Educator absences is approximately 80 per cent daily in the past week. This means that roughly 40 to 60 vacancies per day of school-based staff are unfilled.

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board reports an average of 586 teacher absences per day with an average of 125 jobs unfilled from Jan. 19 to 25. 

“Teaching jobs that were not covered off by an occasional teacher were covered in a variety of different ways that may vary from school to school. Some coverage issues were addressed by reassigned non-classroom teachers, use of emergency instructors and administrators supervising students,” the DCPDSB said in a statement. 

While the higher number of cases were expected teachers’ unions are raising concerns about the quality of education. 

“They cannot create lesson plans so the consistency of learning is not happening – it’s just basically supervision,” said ETFO president Karen Brown. 

“If someone that is filling in that class who may not be a qualified teacher, it’s still an opportunity to catch up on previous work assigned,” said Bird. 

The province has directed school boards that operational closures must be a last resort.

The Ford government says additional support including $304 million in dedicated COVID-19 funding to support staffing as well as temporarily increasing the number of days a retired teacher can be re-employed will help. 

“All of that is designed to increase the pool of talent to keep schools safe and open,” said Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education. 

The Durham District School Board says it’s hired 324 Certified Occasional Teachers since December 2021. 

However, some teacher’s union’s argue retired teachers don’t feel comfortable returning to the classroom amid COVID-19. 

“Not feeling comfortable with the safety there and not comfortable putting themselves as risk,” said Barb Dobrowolski, President of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association

Bird says the TDSB hasn’t had to cancel classes as a result and the hope is as the this latest wave of the pandemic improves the occasional teacher pool will increase.