All teacher absences in New Westminster in November were covered by a teacher on call, an administrator or a non-enrolling teacher, according to a school district report.
Teacher and education assistant absences are tracked monthly by school district staff in New Westminster in an effort to monitor the number of absences covered by school-based administrators or non-enrolling teachers, including teacher-librarians and resource and learning support teachers.
The reports, which began in October, also track absences that aren’t covered at all.
Robert Weston, the district’s director of human resources, presented the monthly report on absences in the New Westminster school district at the December school board meeting earlier this month.
“This month we were able to add the information that was requested, which is the school-based administrative coverage and non-enrolling coverage,” Weston told trustees.
In November there were 460 teacher absences, an absentee rate of about six per cent compared to about five-and-a-half per cent in October.
Of the absences in November, 30 were covered by a school-based administrator and 31 were covered by non-enrolling teachers while the remaining 399 absences were covered by a teacher on call, according to Weston.
Non-enrolling teacher absences, meanwhile, were only covered some of the time. A total of 17 absences were covered while 81 absences went uncovered, according to the report.
“Those are much more difficult positions to fill on an ad-hoc absence basis, as you can understand,” Weston said. “Our (teacher-on-call) list includes very few such teachers.”
Absences by education assistants (EAs) was way down in November compared to October. In November, there were 314 absences among New Westminster EAs, down from 503 in October, according to the report.
“There were 145 days that we were unable to replace from our casual list and those went vacant for each of those days,” said Weston. “That’s approximately six or seven EA non-replacements each day (in November.)”
