Cutting their losses
Teaching positions distributed based on needs, class sizes, configurations
Patricia Cole says any loss is substantial at Kensington Intermediate Senior High School.
“We’re bare bones, but a loss of 0.85 is better than what we were originally told the school would lose in full-time teaching positions,” said the president of the KISH parent council.
Next year the school will drop from 23.67 full-time equivalent positions (FTEs) to 22.83, according to the Public School Branch’s allocation numbers. “This year we recognized that the asks or needs schools had were large. We were given 25 new positions to help with those needs, but they are a finite amount,” said Public Schools Branch director, Parker Grimmer.
Grimmer said staffing is decided annually based on the allocations provided by the government and the branch distributes them over the Island’s 56 schools.
There have been nine schools with a drop in enrolment of a significant nature.
This has resulted in 24 schools losing less than one FTE and 19 schools getting an allocation of one FTE or more.
The positions were distributed using the same kind of mechanisms in the past year, he said. “We want to get the FTE to where the students are. We look at equitable distribution, class composition, composition of similar size schools with similar size configurations.” Parker admitted this school year didn’t run like normal because of public consultations and the growing interest in the school system.
“In a normal year it’s an internal process where administrators and the branch organize staffing. This year we recognized that the demand for FTEs was greater than what we had.” Government is the only agency that is able to grant more staff to the school system, said Grimmer.
“The 25 allocations were made evenly across the province by establishing what the schools’ needs were. And with the additional allocations we were able to address some of those needs, but not all.”
But for now, Cole, other parents and students across the province are still waiting to learn what courses might be lost in what schools. “Some of the programs were certainly in jeopardy before the new numbers were released. But so far there have been no discussion about what might have to go, a tough decision for all principals. I just hope we don’t have to go through all of this again next year,” said Cole.”