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KSB anticipates staffing shortfall as application deadline closes

Teachers lured by comparable offers in the South

ODILE NELSON

The Kativik School Board is predicting another hiring shortfall for the 2003-04 school year, after it received fewer than 300 CVs for its Feb. 10 application deadline.

Though school board officials admitted they were disappointed by the small number of candidates, they tried to put a positive spin on the situation.

"We used to receive a lot of CVs in previous years, a lot more than 300. But most of the CVs we used to receive were from people who weren’t really interested," Stéphane Boulanger, a human resource counsellor for the school board, said in an interview last week.

"When we would make an offer, people would say, ‘Where are you again?’ Now we have people who are very interested. They know something about the North. They want to be there."

On Jan. 9, Boulanger and his colleagues began travelling to university career fairs across the country, competing with other school boards for the limited number of potential teachers.

But as of last week, Boulanger said, it looked like the school board would have a pool of just 300 candidates to choose from.

Only three-quarters of the applicants are likely qualified for the position, he said. The school board will weed out a few dozen of those during interviews, and, in the end, only one out of every 10 approved candidates will likely accept an offer of employment.

With an anticipated 60 positions to fill, a staffing shortfall at the start of the 2003-04 academic year is a near certainty, he said.

"The problem is maybe we have 30 people hired in April but between April and the start of the next school year a lot of resignations may happen and candidates who accepted positions might find jobs somewhere else — that’s why some positions are not filled," Boulanger said.

Yet there is not much more the school board can do to attract teachers to Nunavik, Boulanger said. The school board’s teaching rates, by Quebec law, must be comparable to the rates offered in the South.

The standard salary for a first-year teacher with a bachelor of education degree is $33,034 a year. Though the school board offers isolation allowances and retention premiums to prospective teachers, it is not ultimately the money that will convince someone to teach in Nunavik, he said.

Robin Stewart, a student of Nippising University’s education program who hopes to work for the Kativik School Board after she graduates this fall, agrees. Most of her fellow students, she said, have little desire to go North now that there are so many comparable, and easier, opportunities in the southern Quebec.

Like Boulanger, she thinks it is more personal interest than financial incentives that draws teachers to the experience. Nunavik is her first choice.

"I’m attracted to the idea because I think it would be a true test of my skills as a teacher and as a person to teach in an environment that I am unfamiliar with," she said. "There’s an excitement that comes with the curiosity of the unknown for me."

Still, she said, she’s not certain how long she will stay after she arrives.

"My hope would be to stay for definitely more than a year," she said. "But, having said that, if it’s a terrible, terrible, experience I’m comforted by the fact it’s only a one-year contract so I have an out if I want. "

That touches on another piece of the KSB’s recruitment puzzle — keeping the staff it already has.

"What I always say to the managers I’m working with in communities is that the best recruitment is to keep the teachers that we have. To stop the turnover. It’s very high," Boulanger said.

Though some teachers stay on for 15, even 20 years, they tend to be the exception. In 2001, the school board estimated its annual teacher turnover was roughly 60 per cent.

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