Editor's note: Mr. Seguin writes in response to the BayToday story Schools suffering 'critical staffing shortages'.
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To the editor:
This past Friday BayToday ran an article about critical shortages in the education sector.
Apparently, there aren't enough qualified people available to keep our schools running in the way they should. I would like to make the case for why people are not drawn to these careers in the first place which may very well be why we are seeing such shortages.
To start, if you have ever spoken to an elementary school teacher they will tell you that the classrooms are incredibly difficult to manage with the number of behaviours and learning disabilities. Also when EAs call in sick or cannot attend work for other reasons they are not replaced. And yet we should only look at the salaries and number of jobs at the top end to see why our board "cannot afford" substitute EAs. And speaking of EAs they do not make nearly enough for the work they do. They are not valued by society just as ECEs are not valued. We need to pay them and ECEs more in order to attract people to these occupations.
Also if you have had kids in the system here you have likely experienced an administrator principal or vice-principal needing time off. And if you have taken the time to find out why you'll know it is not only because the job is extremely difficult but there is very little support for our administrators from the higher-ups at the board. If you know of any who are now retired and have not heard the stories take time to listen and you'll find out how they are treated by the director and many of his team. Who would want to be an administrator on this board if they were treated so badly?
I have had friends who are custodians and I can tell you that vandalism is a regular thing in our schools and that not enough is being done to prevent it. They also feel as though there is not enough support for them from administrators probably because they are so burnt out with the other parts of their jobs.
Also, the pay isn't good at all so not enough people are heading in that direction for their careers. We should pay custodians more and support them more for the hard work they do every day.
As far as teaching careers go. each one of us who has had kids and teens to raise must understand how difficult teaching 30 of them in a room must be. They get summers off but they wouldn't last long in that profession if they had to work all year.
And if we look locally at the handling of the amalgamation of the high schools with all the promises broken and the poor handling of it all by the higher-ups we can bet our local teachers are not encouraging their loved ones to go into the professions. Our board has been told it must be transparent but they just keep on with their secrets.
Have you asked yourself why so many on the board have resigned in the past few years? Maybe they were the honest ones? Our board hasn't been led by people with integrity in a long time. If we had better leadership maybe we would see people wanting to work in the education sector in our area.
Take time to speak to a graduate of Widdifield who was in grade 12 when schools amalgamated and they will tell you all about the promises made by the director at that time and how they were broken. It wouldn't surprise me if those kids would have a sour taste in their mouths when thinking of working back in education in this city.
It is sad that we don't have enough people to work in our schools but at the same time, we have to ask ourselves why. The current director needs to take a very close look at how he and his team are handling this board before asking the government to solve our problems.
Jeff Seguin
North Bay
