More teachers and classroom staff are calling in sick at Ottawa’s public school board, and the cost of hiring substitutes to replace them is rising.

At a time when the board is chopping jobs and programs to make up a budget shortfall, more money is being poured into paying an army of substitute teachers, as well as staff to replace the educational assistants and early childhood educators who book off sick.

The average number of sick days taken by all those classroom workers has risen over the past five years, according to statistics provided by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. Elementary teachers, the largest group of employees at the board, took an average of 7.87 days of sick leave in 2010-11, for example. That climbed to 9.73 days in 2014-15. Sick days taken by secondary teachers increased to 9.14 days from an average of 7.84 days in that same time period.

The increase for other workers in the classroom was comparable or higher. Sick days taken by the educational assistants who help children with special needs rose from an average of 10.09 days to 13.53 days in that time period, while the average number of sick days taken by the early childhood educators who work alongside teachers in kindergarten went from 6.94 days to 11.44 days.

Sick-leave statistics are still being compiled for the current school year, but it’s clear the trend is continuing. Staff have recommended adding an extra $1 million to the “occasional teacher” budget next year, “based on recent experience.”





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“We did the same last year, which proved to be inadequate,” the budget report says.

“It just keeps going up and up,” said trustee Mark Fisher at a budget meeting. The board can’t afford to keep adding more money for substitute teachers, he said in an interview. “I have some concerns in terms of what is happening in the organization that is causing it. How do you respond to it? We’ve been talking about this for years, and clearly what we’re doing isn’t working.”

He wants the board to do a “deep dive” into the issue, to root out the causes and find solutions. Other trustees and board staff say they don’t know the cause, either, but speculate it may be related to a change in sick-leave provisions in teacher contracts, labour unrest, stress in the classroom and an aging workforce.

The amount the board spends to hire substitute teachers has been rising steadily, and was approximately $15 million this year. About two-thirds of that amount was to replace teachers off sick, with the rest used to replace teachers off for other reasons, including maternity-paternity leave, personal days or workplace safety insurance absences.

Then there is the continuing expense of paying the salaries of classroom educators who book off sick. That cost in 2014-15, for example, was estimated at $11.24 million to replace teachers, educational assistants and early childhood educators on sick leave. Some things are hard to put a price on, such as the effect on children’s education when substitutes take the place of their teachers.

The issue should be a priority, said Fisher, noting that trustees spend a lot of time debating relatively minor budgetary items. Case in point: parents pleaded with trustees at a budget meeting last week to save after-school piano lessons, because the extracurricular arts program is on the budget chopping block to save $48,000 a year.

Both the board and teachers have an interest in reducing sick-leave costs, Fisher said. The money saved could be invested in the classroom, and on programs to help students that teachers agree are needed, he said.

The problem is not unique to Ottawa. Across Ontario, elementary teachers and education workers took more sick days in 2014-15 than four years earlier, according to a report by School Boards’ Co-operative Inc., an organization established by Ontario school boards to provide advice on compensation issues. The increases across the province weren’t as significant as in Ottawa, though, and among secondary teachers there was actually a decline. Ontario elementary teachers took an average 7.7 days off sick in 2010-11, rising to 8.46 in 2014-15, according to the report, which included data from 55 school boards. It found that the average number of sick days taken by secondary teachers declined slightly in that time period, from 7.68 days to 7.55 days.

Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals has suggested there’s a link between rising sick-leave rates and a contract the government imposed on teachers in 2012 that ended the banking of unused sick leave for a cash payout on retirement. “There’s no reason to believe that they’re actually sicker than they were two years ago,” Sandals remarked this spring. “It would appear that there is a relationship between the belief that they lost something and taking more sick days.”

In a statement from her office, Sandals clarified that teachers are professionals and she “does not believe the majority of teachers are abusing the system.”

No one has studied the reasons for rising sick-leave rates among teachers, as far as he’s aware, says Charles Pascal, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a former deputy minister in the Ontario Ministry of Education.

But human nature being what it is, it’s easy to speculate that some teachers have adopted a “use them or lose them” approach to sick days because they can no longer be banked for a cash payout, he said.

Banking sick leave was an “unsustainable and ridiculous policy” that gave teachers an incentive to go to school when they were ill, he said.

That incentive is now gone, so some teachers who have a bad cold, for instance, may be more likely to book off sick, he said. That may be better for everyone in the school, as they aren’t spreading illness.

The issue is nuanced, and more research needs to be done, said Pascal.

Ottawa trustee Shawn Menard noted that teachers and other education workers have also gone through labour disputes over the past six years. There were work-to-rules, withdrawals of service and vitriolic debate in the media during contract negotiations. “That doesn’t create a happy staff, that is recognized for the value they bring.”

“A happy staff call in sick less.”

A teachers’ union official says there’s no evidence teachers are taking unwarranted sick days.

“I don’t believe it’s people abusing the sick leave,” says Janet Fraser, a vice-president of the Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers Federation. “Generally speaking, (teachers) aren’t malingerers.”

She speculates that teachers are taking more sick days because they are under such stress in the classroom. Teachers cope with an increasing number of students with autism, behaviour problems, anxiety and depression, she said. “The stress in the schools is ridiculous. We have teachers falling like flies.”

Her office hears from stressed-out teachers who say that maintaining control has become more difficult under the province’s “progressive discipline” approach. “Even the good kids know they can get away with bad behaviour because there are no consequences.

“You send them to the office and they’re given a sucker, a candy or an iPad to play on.”

Fraser recently heard from a Grade 2 teacher who has to “evacuate” her classroom nearly every week because of the disruptive behaviour of one pupil, who trashes the place. “She says she’s going to be off on stress leave if something doesn’t happen.” Another teacher called to report a student threatened to kill her. “The kids are running the schools.”

“When you have people working in a stressful situation like that, they get sick.”

She doesn’t doubt that sick leave is increasing. “We know these numbers are up. People phone us in our office all the time in tears: ‘I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I’m so upset about the way things are going.'”

In Ottawa, the problem was flagged years ago, before the 2012 contract changes.

A consultant’s report in 2010 warned that the cost of replacing sick teachers was soaring. The report found that expenditures associated with sick leave had increased by 21.8 per cent in four years. In an echo of comments today, trustees at the time said they couldn’t identify a reason. The report suggested implementing an “attendance management” program to decrease absences.

The board now has a program in place to identify employees who have “excessive absenteeism” and to “offer assistance and support,” as well as to “encourage regular, punctual attendance at work through the use of preventative measures,” according to a statement from the board. The program is not intended to be disciplinary.

The goal is to help sick employees return to work, including allowing them to work part-time or making accommodations to ease the transition, said trustee Lynn Scott. But employees don’t always see the program as benign, she acknowledged. “We have worked hard to make it clear that the objective is to help people, but that’s not always how it’s interpreted.”

Fraser said such programs can be helpful, depending on how they are implemented. A couple of years ago, the board sent out letters to teachers who had been sick for more than 10 days, reminding them that it was important to come to work, she said. “That went over like a lead balloon.” She recalls one teacher who had rarely been ill, but was recovering from serious surgery. That teacher had already planned to come back to school earlier than her doctor recommended because she felt an obligation to her students. “And she gets this letter saying ‘Guess what? You should be at work.’ Well, that’s insulting.”

It would be different if the board targeted problems, such as teachers who tend to be ill on Fridays and Mondays, she said.

It’s difficult to make direct comparisons with the sick leave taken by workers in private-sector jobs. Statistics Canada says full-time Canadian workers lost an average of 7.4 days in 2015, but that includes both illness and disability.

Officials at the Ottawa Catholic School Board declined to provide information about sick-leave rates, saying this newspaper would have to request them through freedom-of-information legislation.