Algoma District school board recruiting unqualified teachers for help

One school board in northern Ontario is looking to unqualified educators to help deal with its teacher shortage during this pandemic.

The Algoma District school board put out a call for inexperienced emergency teachers, to help out at local schools.

"They may not have gone to teachers' college, but they might have other skill sets that the board can utilize in the classroom," says Frank Palumbo, superintendent of human resources with the board.

"An unqualified teacher can also be a teacher who has a teaching certificate but has just never pursued the profession or has never applied yet."

Palumbo said they're usually short between 10 and 15 substitute teachers every day, and he expects those numbers to increase during the upcoming flu season and second wave of COVID-19.

So far, 190 people have applied to be unqualified teachers with the Algoma board.

Other school boards also use unqualified teachers.

District School Board Ontario North East has had the same challenge in finding daily qualified occasional teachers. Education director Leslie Dye says they are also now beginning to have permanent teacher vacancies. In those cases, principals re-work the timetables to ensure students have qualified teachers on a permanent basis.

The Rainbow District School Board in Sudbury says it's not using unqualified teachers at this time.