ONTARIO
OCDSB overestimate bumps some teachers into more precarious jobs

CBC
Tue, October 10, 2023 

OCDSB overestimated the number of students enrolling this year by about 1,600. (Celeste Decaire/CBC - image credit)

When Denise Morgan found out she got a long-term occasional (LTO) teaching assignment this June, she got to work right away.

She made a long-range plan and invested more than $250 of her own money in classroom supplies and resources.

Morgan, a pseudonym CBC is using to protect her identity due to her concerns about her relationship with her employer, spent a month in an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) classroom.

She got to know her students. They got to know her. And then it was gone.

She learned that a permanent contract teacher would take over her class as the board consolidated elementary classrooms.

Morgan said she was "absolutely devastated."

"All that work that I put in, I don't get to see the fruits of my labour and neither do my students," she said.

"I know that it's technically not permanent employment, but there's no way that I would be able to deliver a high-quality program to my students if I did not prepare for a full year," she added.

"If I have to prepare for a full year, I should be able to complete that full year."

Like many, Morgan received only five days' notice about the change as the board shuffled out LTO teachers after elementary enrolment numbers came in short of projections for the current school year.

Pat Dixon, president of the Ottawa Carleton Elementary Occasional Teachers' Association, said teachers who were filling LTO positions for the year have suddenly been bumped out of those jobs to make room for reassigned contract teachers.

"It's a huge impact on my members, because people who thought they had a full year's job … now they're down to no job, other than whatever daily work they can pick up," she said.

Board looking to find displaced LTOs other work

The income loss for teachers who were bumped is significant, according to Dixon.

She said LTOs are paid at the same rate as permanent contract teachers, while a daily occasional teacher — often known as a supply or substitute teacher — would make thousands less even if they picked up work every school day of the year.

Darcy Knoll, an OCDSB spokesperson, confirmed the classroom reorganization displaced many elementary LTOs, though he did not say how many.

He noted that the collective agreement allows for those positions to be cancelled with five days' notice.

He said the board is working to offer them other jobs and many may be able to work in the designated occasional teacher program, which keeps occasional teachers dedicated to substitute work at one particular school to the extent possible.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board sign at its main building on Greenbank Road.
Darcy Knoll, an OCDSB spokesperson, says the collective agreement allows cancellation of long-term occasional positions with five days' notice. (Danny Globerman/CBC)

Morgan said taking on a role like that would be a "drastic change" from what she accepted in June.

"Being an everyday classroom teacher in the same class for a long period of time is a very different job than someone who's filling in for a teacher every day," she said.

She said there are no sick leave or health benefits in the role, something she had in the LTO position, and she'd have to be prepared for redeployment in the event that no teachers were absent from her designated school.

It could also affect her career prospects, she said, since an LTO job looks much better on a resume.

"As a teacher, you learn a lot from seeing a full year through with the same group of students," she said. "Ending this assignment creates a break in my resume."

Shuffling hard on permanent teachers too

Dixon said it isn't unusual to see a reorganization at the beginning of the year, but she's never seen anything like what happened this year when the board's projection was about 1,600 students too high.

"The unusual part of it is the number of students that we misprojected," she said. "We thought there would be more growth."

Rebecca Zuckerbrodt, president of the Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, said the reshuffling is stressful for permanent contract members as well.

They too have spent a month getting to know their students and now some have to start over with a whole new group.

At a certain point, about 80 contract teachers were being reassigned, she said, though that's not necessarily the latest number. Some have had to move schools, according to Zuckerbrodt.

She blamed what she called a "broken funding formula" from the province that keeps boards on tight budgets with tight timelines and forces them to scramble to fill deficits when projections don't pan out.

She called the situation "government-induced chaos" that could make it hard to recruit and retain teachers.

Malaka Hendela, co-chair of the Ottawa Carleton Assembly of School Councils, has a 12-year-old at Centretown's Glashan Public School. She said the reorganization cut one class there, pushing more students into her son's classroom.

Malaka Hendela, co-chair of the Ottawa-Carleton Assembly of School Councils, said parents will need organizational and other support to build community around the students who are registered for remote learning. Malaka Hendela, co-chair of the Ottawa-Carleton Assembly of School Councils, says the reorganization is tough on students. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

Reorganization can be tough on students, she added, creating a lot of disruption for their learning and social development.

"A student is going to experience peer disruption, learning disruption, with a teacher they may have connected with," Hendela said.

She's concerned the disruption also creates a risk of losing teachers, who might drop out of the district or the profession.

"To lose your classroom and then go occasional, it's a hardship," she said. "And it's a hardship that's going to be felt on the people that we need to grow to be our teachers for tomorrow."