KAMLOOPS — The beginning of the school year has come with larger classes in some schools, meaning the district has been busy hiring more teachers.
Some part-time teachers have moved into full-time positions, while others are being hired as teachers on call. But filling those positions hasn’t been an issue.
“We’ve been very fortunate this year that we’ve been able to add a large number of TOCs to our current list,” said District Superintendent of Human Resources Shayne Olsen. “We have not seen some of the pressures that we know exist in other districts. Over the last week, in fact, we’ve oriented over 30 new TOCs to the list. Many of those already have full- or part-time positions within the district.”
The Kamloops-Thompson School District anticipated the need for more substitute teachers and have acted accordingly.
“We’ve been looking for people in those high-need qualifications such as French, Tech Ed, and those sorts of things, so we particularly went after those people, and we were very fortunate to actually have a better response and were able to fill those positions,” said Olsen. “Now we’re looking for other people who have come to our community looking for work and we’re continuing to interview and offer positions as TOCs initially.”
Hiring 30 TOCs, and potentially more in the coming week, comes as great news for the Kamloops-Thompson Teachers’ Association, but President Amanda Jensen warns more will be needed.
“As the school year proceeds and there are teachers, who are either going on leave, teachers that are moving into other positions, teachers that are for whatever reason leaving the school district, that list is going to continue to dwindle,” she said. “So we have to stay on top of the number of teachers who are on that list.”
The district says it’s working on enlarging the list. Jensen says retaining teachers in Kamloops and area has been a little more challenging since the 2016 Supreme Court ruling that resulted in smaller class sizes and hiring more teachers.
“I know after the Supreme Court ruling, with so many opportunities to teach in different places, it was very hard to continue to retain teachers,” said Jensen. “School District 73 and Kamloops area is a very desirable place to live, and because we are such a vast geographic area, there are lots of opporunities. So I’m hoping that those kinds of things continue to recruit teachers here.”
The district acknowledges about 25 more teachers on call are needed, but Olsen says that is not unusal for the start of the school year.
“Usually with the first week of school, there’s still some movement and classes to be filled. We’re fortunate enough to have a qualified teacher at every one of our classrooms,” said Olsen. “Over the next week, we’ll have finalized who those people will be for the rest of the year. Then we’re going to take a look at our TOC pool, probably in the next couple weeks, to identify how many, if any, we need to hire.”
