Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, October 2, 2024

Ontario is staring down a teacher shortage as retirements and student enrolment are both on the rise, and the Ministry of Education expects the situation will start to get even worse in 2027.

The warning is contained in a series of briefing documents for the new minister of education, obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request.

Many school boards in Ontario and elsewhere are experiencing challenges recruiting and retaining enough qualified teachers, the document says, and in Ontario, the issue is particularly felt in areas such as French and tech education.

“Modelling projects that student enrolment over the coming years is expected to increase along with teacher retirements, while the supply of new teachers is to remain stable, absent intervention,” the briefing says.

“These factors are projected to result in a growing gap between the number of teachers needed and the number of teachers available. This (projected) gap is expected to widen beginning in 2027.”

Word of teacher supply and demand struggles is not new to the unions representing Ontario’s teachers, who say one of the main issues is working conditions, including violence in classrooms, too few special education supports, and not enough money for classroom supplies.

“The conditions in the classroom are deteriorating,” said Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

“We have members within their first five years just leaving the profession … It’s troubling that this government knows that there are some issues with retention and recruitment and that they’re actually not wanting to address them.”

A spokesperson for Education Minister Jill Dunlop said in a statement that the government has introduced a number of measures, including halving processing timelines for domestic and international applicants, allowing second-year teaching candidates to work as supply teachers, and replacing seniority-based hiring with a merit-based system for quicker recruitment of staff. 

“School boards and education unions need to do their part by creating a serious plan to improve teacher absenteeism with better attendance management practices that ensure students are continually taught by qualified educators in the classrooms now and into the future,” Edyta McKay wrote.

A decade ago, Ontario had a teacher surplus, with an unemployment rate of nearly 40 per cent for teachers in their first year after becoming certified. 

In 2015, the then-Liberal government made teachers’ college two years instead of one and admission rates plummeted from more than 7,600 in 2011 to 4,500 in 2021 – and now early-career unemployment is at “statistically negligible levels,” according to the Ontario College of Teachers.

It may be time to review that program, said Karen Littlewood, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.

“I’m sure they’re filling the two years with lots of meaningful teaching and learning, but maybe we need to look at compacting it,” she said.

The Ontario Teachers’ Federation estimates that there are about 48,000 teachers who are certified but not currently working in the province’s education system. 

Brown said that number is telling.

“The working conditions are not conducive for these 40,000 people to say, ‘Hey, I want to take this on,'” she said. 

“We’ve negotiated some good contracts. We’re doing well. So (teaching) is not something where you wouldn’t be able to make a decent living, but it’s the conditions.”

The unions are also wondering why the troubling prediction that shortages will get worse in three years was not conveyed to them.

“I think some of the crisis and some of the shortage probably could have been avoided along the way, but, they have those numbers – I don’t know why they aren’t sharing them with us and why we aren’t planning together,” said Littlewood.

René Jansen in de Wal, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said teacher shortages are not a future problem, but one that schools are already grappling with.

“That recruitment and retention issue is real,” he said. “It’s not a 2027 thing. It is a now thing, and it’s a getting worse thing, which actually kind of makes it astounding that there’s no evidence this government is doing anything substantive about it.”

The briefing document says that in particular there is an “acute shortage” of French-as-a-second-language teachers in Ontario, “as in other provinces and territories.” Demand is rising for French immersion and extended French programs, the document says.

French-language school boards are also desperate for teachers, said the union representing the teachers in that system. It ties back to the decision to extend teachers’ college to two years, which was done primarily with English system needs in mind, said the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens.

“Before, the number of graduates was barely sufficient to meet the needs of school boards and to ensure an adequate number of short-term substitute teachers,” Gabrielle Lemieux wrote in a statement. 

“By applying a solution aimed primarily at the majority system to everyone, the government disregarded its obligations toward the French-language education system. The shortage has only worsened year after year since this change.”

The province and the federal government have put more than $23 million toward a French Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy since 2021-22, MacKay said, and it includes efforts to recruit more internationally trained French teachers.

The requirement to complete a two-year, “academic, not employment-based program and move from rural or remote areas” is also a barrier to getting more Indigenous teachers, the ministry briefing document says. 

Demand for Indigenous language courses is rising, with eight per cent and 14 per cent increases in enrolment in elementary and secondary courses, respectively, between 2017-18 and 2019-20, the document says.

When it comes to tech teachers, the shortage has led the government to implement a rule allowing teachers with general qualifications to teach new, mandatory tech education courses.

2) More Ontario school boards in deficit, using reserves: ministry documents

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, October 3, 2024

An increasing number of Ontario school boards are reporting deficits and are using or even depleting their reserves, according to internal Ministry of Education briefing documents.

The association representing school boards in the province says while the Progressive Conservative government has boosted the education budget, increases have not kept pace with inflation, forcing boards to use money they were saving for large projects on operations or make cuts.

Education Minister Jill Dunlop has said that overall, school boards are in good financial health, but her transition binder – obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request – provides a deeper look.

“Sector-wide, school boards are maintaining a healthy reserve level; however, some school boards have depleted/are projected to deplete their reserves over the course of the next few years,” the briefing documents say. 

“Recent information suggested the number of deficit boards are on the rise, meaning more boards are starting to draw down on reserves.”

Historically, school boards have reported an overall surplus in their financial statements, but in recent years the number of school boards in deficit has risen, the documents say. 

Eleven school boards reported an in-year deficit in 2020-21, a number that jumped to 31 boards in 2021-22 and decreased slightly to 29 school boards in 2022-23, according to the documents.

Ministry of Education officials recently told a legislative committee that 31 boards are currently reporting in-year deficits of $200 million. One framed school board deficits as a result of accounting methods.

“Often times, we just inherently think that a deficit is a bad thing, but a deficit just means that it’s money that’s set aside for a future purpose,” the bureaucrat said. 

“Because of how the school boards account — they follow public sector accounting standard rules — the only way they can access these reserves is by incurring an in-year deficit. So it’s a bit of a complex accounting exercise, but it is no different than you and I putting money aside into a savings account, for example.”

But Kathleen Woodcock, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said the impacts of deficits and using reserve funds are far-reaching – citing narrower course offerings and cuts to services.

“If they keep dipping into their reserves or making cuts … the student impact is that students don’t have the best education opportunities that they would have if we didn’t have to use our reserves, or if we were properly funded,” she said. 

“So some students are not going to be able to perhaps have the courses they need for their post-secondary education. It just becomes a big mess, and the solution is proper funding for the whole sector.”

A spokesperson for Dunlop said since 2018, the government has increased public education funding by 20 per cent and increased funding by 136 per cent to fix aging infrastructure and other capital expenditures.

“At a time when Ontario has provided school boards with record-setting funds to support student education, boards should not be recording deficits,” Edyta MacKay wrote in a statement. 

“Overall, school boards are in good financial health, with an accumulated surplus of $1.3 billion but we’re seeing a startling disconnect at some boards when it comes to financial management.”

The transition binder also provides a glimpse at some of the capital cost pressures facing school boards. The average age of schools is more than 40 years, the documents say, and renewal needs increase with time.

There is also no dedicated funding to modernize schools, the documents say. 

“Boards can use some of their renewal allocation to support improvements but renewal funding is primarily focused on renewal/replacement of existing building components,” the briefing notes say.

As well, a moratorium on school closures is placing further strain on those budgets, with boards “spending their limited school renewal funding on maintaining and operating schools that may otherwise have closed,” the documents say.

In 2017, the Liberal government of the day put the moratorium in place while it reviewed the process of how closure decisions are made.

While the moratorium was intended to be temporary, it is still in place seven years later and there is no indication if the current government has completed the review.

The documents also note that the ministry is working with boards on “mitigation plans” around reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, the same roof panels the government cited as the reason for abruptly closing the Ontario Science Centre.

The issue has not been accounted for in renewal needs, the documents say, but Woodcock, of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said it does not seem to be a major problem so far.

“We’ve been hearing from our boards that there’s a relatively small number of schools within some boards that have this type of concrete and boards currently, they have budgets that can manage that kind of repair,” she said.