By Derek Cornet

‘Plan B’: LLRIB director of education believes teacher shortage will get worse

Sep 5, 2018 | 2:00 PM

The director of education for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band (LLRIB) believes the teacher shortage in northern communities will continue to get worse.

“This will be an issue going forward,” Simon Bird said. “It’s tough to get interviews and jobs in urban centres, so that tells you larger centres are being filled. We at northern schools are oftentimes considered plan ‘B.’”

While the LLRIB schools in Hall Lake, La Ronge and Sucker River were fully staffed by the first day of school, Bird noted there were challenges in doing so. He said because the band was still looking for teachers last school year until November, the education department changed its human resources strategy and continued interviewing potential teachers until June.

The biggest issue the LLRIB faced this summer was losing teachers who had committed to work, but ultimately decided to take an offer elsewhere. He added it’s also difficult to recruit and retain teachers because First Nations schools don’t receive the same amount of funding and support as provincial ones.

“What we’ve done from the onset is we always try to hire teachers that know our community and can see themselves in our community,” Bird said.

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Meanwhile, Saskatchewan NDP education critic Carla Beck stated concerns were brought up about an impending teacher shortage before the closure of NORTEP in 2017. She noted the program had a 40-year history of training teachers, adding 94 per cent of the 500 graduates were working in the North in their chosen profession.

“I can’t help but think back to the concerns brought forward and raised repeatedly ahead of the decision to cut NORTEP,” Beck said. “That decision is only going to prove to be more and more wrong-headed as we move through and continue to see these teacher shortages throughout the North.”

Beck also accused the Saskatchewan Party of not taking the advice of northerners when they cut NORTEP’s funding. She said by taking southern standards and applying them to the North shows how out of touch the provincial government is regards to the needs of northern Saskatchewan.

“Those who are really hurt are the children in the classroom without the adequate number of teachers, and those teachers are struggling to make due with fewer of their colleagues,” Beck said.

derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno