A rising number of teachers calling in sick and a shortage of supply staff available to replace them is creating an “untenable” situation for schools, and reflects a growing problem across the province, says Toronto’s Catholic board.

“I’ve never seen unfilled vacancies as high as we’ve seen them this year, primarily since January,” Rory McGuckin, director of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, said in an interview.

“Fill rates” of occasional teachers covering absences, which fluctuate day to day and range according to location, have been falling as low as 70 per cent at the Catholic board, he said, and the impact is detrimental to students.

To cope, teachers may double up their classes as they scramble to cover for each other, special education students may be moved into regular classrooms where they don’t get the same level of support, and children in French immersion can end up being taught in English.

Principals and vice-principals have been struggling to address the shortfall, even spending Saturdays interviewing potential occasional teachers to beef up the roster, said McGuckin. The board’s pool ideally includes 1,500 names, but has slipped below 1,400, with many on the list tied up with long-term replacement duties and others taking jobs at multiple boards, which means they are frequently unavailable, he added.

McGuckin’s comments came on the heels of a letter sent to Education Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris by board trustees last week, urging the province to “take immediate action.” It blames sick leave plans that no longer allow teachers to bank sick days until retirement, and provide them with 11 sick days a year, five non-personal days and up to 120 days of short-term leave at nearly a full salary.

“We strongly believe that the current state of affairs is untenable,” said the April 5 letter, signed by board chair Barbara Poplawski. Without action, “the situation will continue to worsen and threaten student learning, achievement and well-being in our schools” and severely strain resources.

The board estimates the situation is costing it almost $30 million, or $2.8 million a month, for the academic year.

The education ministry “will be responding shortly,” said spokesperson Derek Luk. He said Naidoo-Harris recently hosted a day-long symposium with dozens of education partners to discuss teacher supply and demand challenges and solutions. The current sick leave plan for teachers “aligns with the practice in other public sector organizations,” he added.

Unions representing Catholic and public school teachers both locally and provincially say the problem is affecting many Ontario boards. They say higher rates of absenteeism are fuelled by rising levels of classroom violence that cause stress and mental health issues for teachers as well as injuries.

The problem has also sparked worries in some quarters that schools in a staffing pinch are hiring adults who aren’t certified teachers to manage classrooms as emergency replacements — a practice McGuckin says the Toronto Catholic board does not engage in.

“In the case of an emergency where there is no teacher available to hire, school boards have the ability to hire a person who is not a teacher for up to 10 days,” said the ministry’s Luk.

The supply teacher crunch “has escalated in the last year,” says Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA). “It frustrates the parents, it frustrates the teachers and it frustrates the students.”

Among them is Toronto parent Luci Crawford who is fed up with the repeated interruptions in her daughter’s French immersion learning. After the Grade 4 class spent a week with an English-speaking supply teacher in March, Crawford complained to the Catholic board and the ministry.

“I’m really angry about this,” said Crawford. “Something needs to be done. The focus is not on the children. There’s not a lot of learning going on.”

Stuart of OECTA said a big reason for absences is systemic problems related to lack of supports for students with behavioural issues and other needs, which cause stress and sickness for classroom teachers. Other union reps say it can also make occasional teachers reluctant to accept jobs in schools without sufficient resources.

The “fail to fill” problem drew members from a dozen Ontario locals of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) to a forum in February, says Karen Campbell, the union’s first vice-president.

“It impacts the learning,” she said in an interview. “A classroom of 23 becomes very quickly 46 because they weren’t able to attract an occasional teacher to that particular school. That is very common to very frequent.”

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Teachers and boards also worry it hits some of the most vulnerable students hardest, such as those in special ed or English as a second language programs placed with teachers who don’t know them and without the supports they need.

The high cost of sick days was targeted by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk in her 2017 annual report in December, which examined four major boards including Toronto Catholic and slammed them for failing to manage the problem.

Poplawski’s letter to the ministry said sick days at the Catholic board have soared by 30 per cent in the last five years, with the average hitting 18 days in 2016-17.

Teachers and school boards say there are other factors causing the staffing predicament, including occasional teachers who sign on with several boards to make sure they get enough work, an increase in professional development that takes teachers out of their classrooms, more teachers retiring, and the fact teachers college was recently extended two years, which means a smaller pool of new teachers are certified each year.

The issue was a hot topic at the March meeting of the Toronto District School Board’s Parent Involvement Advisory Committee, says co-chair Trixie Doyle. She said delegates representing school councils across the city had been hearing complaints from parents about teachers regularly calling in sick and an assortment of replacements cycling through classrooms.

TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird says the board has an “ample” roster of occasional teachers which has been “relatively consistent” over recent years.

“However, ‘declines’ (from occasional teachers who are unavailable) do present a challenge at times,” he said. “Like other boards across the province, the TDSB has seen an increase in sick days being taken over recent years, especially in the months of May and June.”

Union representatives and several parents and teachers interviewed by the Star expressed concern about the use of unqualified emergency replacements in some boards.

While they may have police checks and experience volunteering or working part-time in the school, that measure should be limited to “bonafide emergencies,” said Campbell of ETFO.

“We have seen a trend, and that’s something we are addressing board by board, local by local, looking at how to deal with that,” she said. “These are not emergencies, these are practices that are being developed and we’re totally against that.”

Andrea Gordon can be reached at agordon@thestar.ca