Teacher hiring is still underway in Chilliwack, with just two weeks left until that first bell rings.
Evelyn Novak, superintendent of schools for Chilliwack School District, says they are posting jobs every day on a website used across the province for teacher postings.
“We continue to post jobs every day on Make A Future, and are hiring as quickly as possible,” she says. “The postings are seen by our staff internally first, and then if we have positions that cannot be filled, we then go externally.”
Other school districts in the region, including Abbotsford, Mission and Langley, have long lists of positions yet to be filled that are open to view from the public. However, Chilliwack’s page on the site only lists Teachers-on-Call positions publically.
Over the province, hundreds of positions still need filling. A Supreme Court of Canada ruling last year led to the province agreeing to fund 2,600 more teachers around B.C. The commitment, which will cost the province $330 million, came after a 15-year legal battle with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
Overall, Chilliwack School District (33) has 32 schools, about 14,000 students, and 1,800 employees. In January this year, the district set out to fill 34 new teaching positions, an interim measure to get toward the full restoration expected in September. That included two FTEs at each secondary school, one to two at each middle school, one for each elementary school, with the exception of smaller schools, one for FVDES and CHANCE, and a .6 FTE position at the Ed Centre.
The new positions added recently included more psychologists, to improve the overall access to testing and support for students across the district.
-with files from Kat Slepian, Black Press
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