Union hopeful jobless teachers will be employed come fall in Kamloops

KAMLOOPS – It’s middle of summer but laid-off teachers are already looking to the fall because only then will they know for sure whether they have a job this coming school year.

Teachers’ union president David Komljenovic is hopeful the 15 teachers laid-off after the school board passed their last budget, May 11, will be rehired.

“The majority will be able to be employed,” Komljenovic says. “The education fund will at least hold the status quo.”

The education fund is money earmarked specifically to hire teachers. Komljenovic says it should create roughly one job or “half a job” every year. 

Toward the end of August, the school district will post job openings and the remainder of positions will be filled before the first week of September. How many teachers rehired will depend on student enrollement and teacher retirement. School starts Tuesday, September 8.

While he's hopeful for the fall, Komljenovic is worried about the continuing trend of job uncertainity.

“The education fund doesn’t create consistent employment," he says, adding the teaching positions created by the fund expire every year, forcing mostly junior teachers to reapply for work at the end of each school year.

“There are teachers that have gone ten years,” Komljenovic says.

He says the inconsistency of base funding for schools, which pays for everything from maintenance and text books to salaries, forces more jobs to be paid for by the education fund.

“A school will say ‘we don’t have enough money for text books’ and cut a teaching position,” Komljenovic says.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Dana Reynolds at dreynolds@infonews.ca or call 250-819-6089. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.