Yukon schools continue to struggle with shortage of teachers-on-call, emails show

Yukon schools continue to grapple with a shortage of teachers-on-call — a situation that was particularly dire at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, according to emails between principals and education department officials. 

Teachers-on-call are the Yukon version of substitute teachers, covering teacher absences, but as their name suggests, work on a standby basis. The shortage has forced principals to get creative in order to make sure classes are still taught.

At F.H. Collins Secondary School in Whitehorse, for example, only approximately 40 per cent of teacher absences were covered during the first four weeks of school, with other staff, including educational assistants, filling in the gaps.

One week, the coverage dropped to only 32 per cent. 

"I think you will find this data as troubling as we do," principal Ruth Burridge wrote to education department staff on Sept. 18. 

The same week, the Holy Family School Council wrote to education officials, including Minister Jeanie McLean and deputy minister Mary Cameron, to request their "urgent attention and action to address a chronic Teachers on Call (TOC) shortage." 

"Our school has been operating on a deficit since the beginning of the school year with absences, and this is unacceptable," the email reads. "Our administration is needing support which they are not receiving despite requests."

The emails were among dozens obtained by CBC News via an access-to-information request, and offer a view into what Yukon Association of Education Professionals president Ted Hupé said has become a "repeat problem."

"Every morning, the principals are triaging their situation ... as to how they're going to cover the classes and the students that they have," he said in an interview, adding September was exceptionally bad. 

"We were in a critical situation where we just didn't have enough bodies." 

Linda Lamers, a superintendent with the Department of Education, told CBC News she hadn't heard from principals that this school year has been worse than others, but said the department was "actively recruiting on a daily basis."

"We are really actively working alongside our school communities, working alongside our community partners, working with the union to get creative on really acknowledging that this is an issue right now," she said. "And we're doing everything we can to find recruitment and working on retaining people in the education system." 

Data provided by the department showed that as of Dec. 19, there were 270 registered teachers-on-call in the Yukon, up from 259 earlier in the month. Twenty applications were also pending. 

Getting coverage for absences, however, is more than just a raw numbers game, according to Hupé and the emails.