By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
The BC School Trustees Association is advocating for a bursary meant to address teacher shortages in northern, rural and remote areas of B.C.
While the entire province has been facing school staffing shortages in recent years, northern areas have struggled with staffing issues over the past two decades and are feeling the impacts of shortages more acutely, says Association Vice-President Tracy Loffler.
“We want to make a long-term strategy, because [staffing shortages] have been a really significant issue in rural, remote and isolated districts for over 20 years,” Loffler told The Goat. “It’s reaching into the more southern parts of the province, but it’s critical in northern areas.”
As such, the Association is pushing for the Province to fund a bursary which would be awarded to students pursuing an education degree who agree to teach in a rural or northern school district for a period of two or three years after graduating. According to Loffler, the Association drew inspiration from the Northern Alberta Development Council, which offers an $18,000 bursary to students in their last year of a teaching program who commit to teaching in northern Alberta for three years after graduating.
In an email statement to The Goat, the Ministry of Education and Child Care said that rural and remote school districts, especially those in northern B.C., do face difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. The Ministry recently provided a hiring incentive to 16 school districts across the province, with four incentives – totalling up to $20,000 – going to School District 57.
“The Ministry of Education and Child Care is committed to working closely with education partners – including the BCSTA – to address these challenges and appreciates their continued work to advocate for public schools in B.C.,” the statement reads.
While this is a step in the right direction, it is not a substitute for a long-term strategy to help with staff recruitment and retention issues, Loffler says. The Province’s funding for teacher hiring incentives is part of a three-year program, according to the Ministry’s statement – meaning it will end in 2025.
“These northern hiring incentives are appreciated and well-received,” Loffler said. “But they don’t provide a long-term solution to equitable access to education in northern areas.”
In an interview with The Goat, SD57 Superintendent Jameel Aziz said the District is working on filling some open teaching positions, but he’s optimistic about this year’s staffing numbers.
“Overall, I would say that we’re doing better than we have in the past,” he said of this year’s staffing shortages. “Even in terms of our short-term replacements [for open teaching positions], schools are telling me they’re having less issues with staff absenteeism. So it’s not a perfect story, but it certainly is a better story than it has been in years past.”
That said, Aziz appreciates efforts to incentivize teachers to work in more remote parts of the province – as long as they have a genuine desire to live and work in small, rural communities.
“You want people who want to be in small communities and like a rural lifestyle so you have some longevity,” he said. “One of the challenges in some of our communities is that there’s a constant turnover of staff.”
Frequent turnover is something the Association wants to avoid as well. Loffler hopes that a bursary like the one in northern Alberta, which is dispersed over a period of a few years, would incentivize teachers to commit to living in their rural communities long-term.
“We want to encourage more people to stay [in rural communities],” she said. “If a teacher signs a contract where they have to stay and teach in a district for two to three years… then they build a career, a community, a life over two or three years. They’ve established roots.”
