Vancouver schools could still be short teachers in September, despite hiring more than 700 teachers in the past year and a half.

The teacher shortage is significant province-wide, but Vancouver has been particularly hard hit because of the cost of living in the city — many teachers who live in the suburbs but who have taught in Vancouver for most of their careers have left for teaching jobs closer to home.

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About 100 teachers on call have resigned from the Vancouver School Board in the last 18 months and about 125 full-time teachers have resigned or retired this year, with another 100 expected to retire this month, a VSB staffing update says.

Katharine Shipley, president of the Vancouver Secondary Teachers’ Association, said she hears from at least one teacher every week that they’re quitting to move to Vancouver Island to take a teaching job where they can afford to live.

The VSB is trying to keep up with all the departures, and by mid-May had interviewed nearly 120 UBC secondary school teacher candidates, with another 100 elementary teacher candidates completing their work experience in Vancouver schools before the end of the year.

B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Glen Hansman estimates that solving this unprecedented province-wide teacher shortage would take another 2,000 teachers.

A healthy teacher-on-call list would have about 700 or 800 people on it, whereas in Vancouver this year, there were only about 400 and about half of those were retired teachers, said Chloe McKnight, president of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association.

With such a short on-call list, it often means when a teacher calls in sick, they are not replaced. In April, the daily average for unfilled teacher absences was 50. That’s down slightly from the three months before that, the hiring update says.

“The BCTF is very concerned with the effect of the shortage on our members, and on the students that we work with — in particular, students with special needs who have had to bear a disproportionate burden due to the regular cancellation of services for them due to specialist teachers being reassigned into classroom positions,” Hansman said.

When a teacher is not replaced, other teachers — often those who work with students with special needs or English language learners — are pulled in to cover. That means the students with special needs lose out.

In Vancouver, 663 classes have seven or more students with special needs and 1,817 classes have four or more such students.

BCTF has filed a provincial grievance, which is now in arbitration, Hansman said. Vancouver teachers are part of that grievance, and McKnight said they have about five other grievances underway related to the restored contract or the lack of replacement teachers.

The VSB did not provide a staff member to be interviewed for this column, instead referring to the hiring update and providing an emailed statement.

“Recruitment is always ongoing, year-round,” VSB communications said in the emailed response. “This year, the district stepped up efforts including attending more career fairs across the country which has yielded a lot of success. The recruitment team will continue to work through the summer.”

To attract and keep teachers, McKnight would like to see student loan forgiveness or a shortened salary grid, to allow new teachers to start further up the pay scale. Shipley said non-market housing is needed so that teachers can afford to live in the city.

As well as those suggestions, the BCTF is calling for mentorship programs, housing and moving allowances, as well as support to teachers seeking additional qualifications. A government task force had similar findings in December.

Both McKnight and Shipley are hopeful that next year will be better, in part due to the return of the elected trustees and the hiring of superintendent Suzanne Hoffman and secretary-treasurer David Green.

“Overall, things feel better, but the teacher shortage will continue,” Shipley said.

Of course, another trustee election is looming in the fall and the teachers’ contract expires in a year, so things could change again before they even get settled.

This round of bargaining promises to be interesting, given the Supreme Court of Canada restoration of class size and class composition rules, some of which have not been updated since 1993 and which do not apply consistently across the province.

But for kids’ sake, let’s hope the VSB is able to hire enough teachers before this fall to — at a minimum — regularly replace teachers who are off sick.

Tracy Sherlock writes about education and social issues. She can be reached at tracy.sherlock@gmail.com.