Students in the North Okanagan-Shuswap School District will be seeing more teachers for the remainder of the school year.
In conjunction with the North Okanagan-Shuswap Teachers Association, the school district has developed a plan to add the equivalent of 12 additional teaching positions for the five months remaining in the 2016/2017 year.
The provincial funding is a step towards the end of a lengthy legal battle between the government and the B.C. Teachers Federation that began in 2002, when then-education minister Christy Clark passed legislation removing class size and special needs support staffing ratios from the union contract.
The dispute went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in the teachers’ favour in November 2016.
The province and the teachers’ union have now negotiated an interim settlement, a $50 million fund to hire up to 1,100 teachers for the current school year. School District #83’s share is approximately $600,000.
It is not known what the implications of the court decision will be for the long term, as discussions with the province are still ongoing.
The additional teachers are being distributed throughout the district in various areas, especially towards learning support teachers. At the high school level, there will be additional to the math and science specialist teacher time at Eagle River Secondary and A.L. Fortune, behavioural intervention at Pleasant Valley Secondary and supports for humanities, math and food studies at Salmon Arm Secondary.
Support teacher time will be added at Carlin, Len Wood and Shuswap Middle Schools.
On the elementary side, there have been additions to learning resources teachers, literacy and numeracy support teachers, and additional teacher support for the three-grade split classes at some rural schools.
There are also some additional resources planned for counselling and speech and language support.