School Board announces job cuts

The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board has announced potential teaching job cuts for next year.

In a press release issued on April 21, Judy Malfara, Communications Officer for the board, stated, "Unfortunately, continued decreases in student enrolment have once again led KPR to the painful reality of having to reduce the number of teachers. Faced with an expected decline of 1,000 students, KPR is forecasting that it will need 125 fewer elementary teachers and 34 fewer secondary teachers this September.

As many of these teachers are part-time, this represents an equivalent of 95 full-time elementary teaching positions, and 24 full-time equivalent secondary positions.

On Friday, April 17, those teachers affected received notice that the Board currently does not have a position for them for September. Senior administration is working closely with the two teacher federations to assist the teachers who received redundancy notices, and to offer information sessions for them.

The Board hopes the final number of teachers declared redundant can be lowered somewhat over the next few weeks, as other factors such as retirements, resignations and personal requests for decreases in teaching time are taken into account.

Teachers who received redundancy notices are being placed on a recall list, and they will have the opportunity to be placed on the occasional teaching lists."

In a message to all staff, Director of Education Sylvia Terpstra stated: “We sincerely regret that we are in this position at this time. We have strived to express to all those affected our belief in their value as teachers.”

She added that it is unclear as yet how the declining enrolment will affect other employee groups, and added, “we will share any information regarding possible impacts in these areas as soon as we can.”

A year ago in spring 2008, 85 full- and part-time elementary teachers were notified that they would no longer be needed, due to an expected decline in enrolment of close to 1,000 students.

This meant a reduction of about 40 full-time teaching jobs. By July, all of those teachers were placed and none were left on the redundancy list.

There were no redundant secondary teachers in 2008.