Medicine Hat short teachers
Medicine Hat area public schools are experiencing the negative effects of a severe teacher shortage, says Lyle Cunningham, deputy superintendent of human resources for SD76.
“We probably started noticing it about two or three years ago,” recalls Cunningham. “We hired 73 teachers for the 2017/18 school year as a result of retirements, leaves, resignations, and we hired nine teachers with the CIF funding through the Alberta government.
“The year before that we hired about 60, and the year before that about 58. Those are pretty big turnover numbers the last three years. This has really brought this teacher shortage to the forefront.”
Cunningham says the division has so far managed to fill most of its elementary school positions even with fewer applications coming in, but it still struggles at the middle and high school levels.
“It used to be we struggled to fill high level chemistry, math and physics teaching positions, but we are now noticing the same difficulties across the board in terms of high school programming,” states Cunningham. “I wouldn’t call it a crisis but I would call it a growing concern. We are really noticing a difficulty with secondary level teachers particularly.”
SD76 will invest more money in its recruitment efforts over the next few years to create greater interfaces with university teaching programs. Part of the problem, says Cunningham, is other larger jurisdictions like Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge are looking for more teachers too.
The division’s strategy is to point out advantages of living and working in Medicine Hat that help it stand out when new teachers are deciding where to start their careers.
“We are looking at how we can maybe utilize some resources to make sure we contact these (teaching students) and let them know Medicine Hat is here,” says Cunningham. “A lot of times people don’t realize what a great community this is to live in. There is a low cost of living, you can actually afford to buy a house here; there are all these types of advantages to living in Medicine Hat. We have a lot of advantages, and we just need to get that out there to draw people in to think about us as a good alternative.”
Prairie Rose School Division has been experiencing similar difficulties in its recruitment of new teachers, says deputy superintendent of operations and human resources Kal Koch, but this is heightened even further by the rural nature of his school district.
“We’re really trying to promote Prairie Rose,” he confirms. “We know have a very positive teaching environment. That we have very good schools and classroom sizes. We have great kids, and we have great communities. We have been using social media like Facebook and Twitter to get that message out there. We have been working on digital placecards we can post on our website so people see what the area is like, and then we can promote that.”
The division knows it needs to ramp up its recruitment efforts, and is making a serious effort to do so.
“It is very concerning,” confirms Koch. “Especially when you have put an ad out there, and you’ve allowed it to run for two or three weeks. Then suddenly it’s the eleventh hour, with maybe two days left, and you haven’t got one application. That has occurred ... We are going to try to take a proactive approach to make sure people are aware we are here, and get our name out there as far and as wide as we can.”