With staffing shortages said to be an issue even before the COVID-19 pandemic, in both the local catholic and public school boards, rising COVID-19 cases in the classroom have only served to exacerbate issues of "fail-to-fill" absences across the sector.
It's impacting educators, early childhood educators, educational assistants and even bus drivers and it appears there may be no "silver bullet" solution.
Patrick Etmanski is the local president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, and said that issues of staffing have been "getting worse and worse every year," though he adds a recent spike has been seen in the return from March Break and the removal of in-school masking mandates.
With the local public board issuing its own warning on staffing challenges due to climbing COVID cases, and the Waterloo Catholic District School Board forced close last week out of "an abundance of caution," Etmanski said school boards are doing everything they can to get staff into classrooms but the teachers simply aren't available.
"There just aren't enough teachers out there. There aren't enough occasional teachers. There aren't enough teachers graduating from out teachers' colleges every year to fill the vacancies we have," said Etmanski. "We've gone through a very large number of retirements over the last few years, and graduation rates haven't kept up with retirement rates and that's the bottom line."
Etmanski adds that the local catholic board has resorted to bringing "unqualified people" into the classroom to supervise students with the work left by absent educators; a move he said his teachers' union does not support but understands given the circumstances.
"They do go through a fairly rigorous screening process where they'll have to do a criminal background check and that sort of thing (...) though most of them do not have any kind of teaching qualification so it is very much a stop-gap measure where we're just trying to keep the schools open, and keep an adult in the classroom to at least supervise..." said Etmanski. "In terms of instruction, evaluation, assessment... none of that is going to happen with these folks."
In addition, Etmanski said his membership has been experiencing some staff shuffling in the catholic board, with teachers assigned to roles outside the classroom like consultants, math coaches and literacy instructors being sent to schools to cover for absent teachers. In addition, Etmanski said that teachers have also been brought from other schools to cover a "fail-to-fill" absence.
"We're trying to deal with learning loss, we're trying to implement programs and get things rolling in schools and the staffing just isn't there to support it at this point. We're not catching up, we're not getting ahead of this problem - it just seems (...) the learning loss is getting pushed down the road another year."
Sharing the perspective of teachers in the public board as the president of the Elementary Teachers Federation in Waterloo Region, Jeff Pelich expressed a similar experience as he said the scene continues to be "chaotic" with students and staff absent and positions going unfilled.
While Pelich maintained that "fail-to-fills" have been happening for "the last 10 years if not longer," he noted the situation was made worse when the province shifted the Faculty of Education in teachers' college to be a two year program rather than one.
"COVID-19 has resulted in some of the highest absence numbers I'm pretty sure our board has ever seen..." said Pelich.
"When we talk about this, we're not just talking about absent educators. The fail-to-fills are definitely ceating chaos in our system for our educators, but there's also fail-to-fills for our designated early childhood educators and our educational assistants, both of which are essential in working with some of the most vulnerable in our system," he said.
The public board has pulled many central staff like consultants, learning coordinators and those not working day-to-day in classrooms to fill-in for educators "at least one day a week," he said.
While conversations also continue around looking to hire students in their last year of education under a temporary provincial provision that would allow them to cover in emergency situations, he calls the offer "not ideal."
"Not having those qualified, certified teachers in front of students is going to play into some of the challenges that students are going to face down to road... where there are going to be gaps in learning because of the chaos that's been created by years and years of under funding in the system and under staffing as well."
While masking remains "strongly encouraged" in both the public and catholic school board, Pelich said he'd like to see a masking mandate in schools at least considered on a temporary basis to "stem the tide of COVID numbers increasing."
"It's not what anyone wants (...) but it's a small ask in the grand scheme of things to protect the safety of students and to protect safety of staff in the school as well."
Etmanski also called for some return to in-school masking requirements, though he argued that the blame for the further slip in learning loss "lies solely with the provincial government," calling their decision to remove COVID protocols and mandates "way too early from a teaching perspective."
"I'd like to see someone from this government step up to a microphone and say 'we made a mistake, we need to re-impose some of these measures,' but that's not going to happen - not this close to a provincial election." said Etmanski.
"I'm confident that we will not see any movement, and we will not see any response. I'm grateful I have the ability to speak [to the media] and point out the fact that this government is not doing everything they can to keep the kids safe, to keep educators safe and to keep schools open." added Etmanski.
"They're just not, and I hope come June 2, the people that go to the polls say 'you know what, this government has failed education. They've failed the kids of this province over the last two years, and they continue to fail them.'"
While Etmanski said that health measures like hand-washing, encouraging social distancing and frequent sanitization remain in place in schools, he called masking the "first line of defence", adding that now that the measure has been lifted, it's difficult to see a return to wearing them once again.
