Director provides staffing update

Limestone Learning Foundation
Director provides staffing update
Posted on 05/24/2019
Image of graphic with a magnifying glass focused on the word staffing.What follows is a letter sent to Limestone District School Board staff by Director of Education Debra Rantz:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to provide you with an update on recent staffing announcements across our district.

As you know, each year at this time some secondary teachers are declared redundant due to our secondary staffing process.  Yesterday, 66 secondary teaching positions were declared potentially redundant for September across our district. Limestone is also losing 24 secondary positions to retirements, which we cannot replace under new directives from the Ontario Government.

We have reassigned system teachers, who support educators and students, to the classroom to help mitigate the losses to program. This means that instead of 24 teachers or 144 classes, we will end up losing about 10 teachers or 60 classes across the secondary panel. The affected teachers are those with 6.4 years of seniority or less in our district.  If not for the reductions in funding this year, our redundancy declaration would have been approximately 40 teachers this year. While core courses will run, the reductions may affect our ability to offer small, unique and specialty courses that support all student pathways.

We do not anticipate any job losses for elementary teachers or support staff. Retirements in these areas will be offset by retirements/attrition.

The proposed reductions over the next four years would result in fewer course options and fewer caring adults in our buildings. While our board understands the government’s fiscal priorities, we believe there may be ways to create efficiencies that do not have potential negative impact on our students and staff. We will continue to engage with the government to advocate for change to their current plan.  A few weeks ago, we received the high-level Grants for Students Needs and Priorities and Partnerships Funding memos, and today received the detailed Technical Paper which outlines board-by-board breakdown of the funding. We will not know the full implications of these reductions until we receive all information and can adjust our projected 2019-2020 budget. We will share more information as it becomes available.

We continue to engage with the government at every opportunity to ensure our voices are heard through the various consultation and feedback opportunities. We remain committed to decision-making that supports the success of all students and will do our best to support staff and students through these changes.

Regards,
Debra Rantz, Director of Education


The Limestone District School Board is situated on traditional territories of the Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee.