School bells will soon be ringing with many support-staff positions unfilled

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On the eve of the new school year, support-staff positions in schools are proving to be as difficult to fill as positions for teachers, says the school sector of the Fédération des employées et employés de services publics (FEESP-CSN).

These include specialized workers, secretaries, special-education technicians and educators who provide childcare outside of school hours.

At a news conference Sunday morning in front of École Charles-Lemoyne in Pointe-St-Charles, union officials highlighted a “worrying” number of vacancies as well as the importance of improving working conditions for support staff to attract new employees.

At the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal, Quebec’s largest French school service centre, for instance, 230 positions for educators who provide childcare are unfilled. At the Centre de services scolaire des Mille-Îles in the Laurentians, the figure is 405, says the FEESP-CSN.

The union said this means some workers will be supervising 30 or 40 children at a time and that some schools might have to limit or roll back their services.

As of mid-August, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal was short nearly 300 teachers. Quebec’s schools have faced a severe teacher shortage for years and many have been forced to rely on people who are not legally qualified to teach.

School service centres are asking special-education technicians to replace some teachers, thereby aggravating the existing shortage of technicians, FEESP-CSN vice-president Frédéric Brun said in a statement.

“It’s not rocket science. The only solution to curbing the exodus and attracting new employees in large numbers is to offer better salaries and better working conditions.”

The union said Sunday it was also concerned about the number of resignations in some school service centres in recent years — including 400 at the Montreal service centre and more than 175 at Mille-Iles.

Annie Charland, president of the union’s school sector, said difficult working conditions are driving even experienced staff away. “I’m talking about people with 20 to 25 years’ seniority who say to me: ’You know, Annie, I can’t do this anymore.”’