SD73 expects to hire 25 more teachers on call by Christmas
By the time Christmas vacation rolls around in a few months, the Kamloops-Thompson School District will have 50 more substitute teachers than it did at the start of the school year.
SD73 superintendent Terry Sullivan said the district has hired 25 additional teachers on call (TOCs) this month and expects to hire 25 more before the Holidays.
The district started the school year with 162 TOCs.
“At about 200, that’s where we need to be,” Sullivan said, noting teacher absences typically pick up as the weather cools down.
The need for hiring is a good thing, Sullivan said, because it means TOCs are turning their substitute-teacher jobs into full-time gigs.
“A lot of people that were on the TOC list have been absorbed into jobs,” he said, calling it a “dramatic turnover” in teachers.
“That depletes the TOC list.”
Sullivan said the TOC list is how new teachers “get into the system.”
Of the district’s current TOCs, 10 are retired teachers.
Sullivan said eight of them have “specialties,” and the other two were promised TOC jobs in exchange for taking early retirement to open up jobs for new teachers.
SD73 has hired approximately 800 new employees in the last six years.
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