Low high school enrolment results in fewer teaching jobs

A decline in high school enrolment means few teachers needed in Sudbury and therefore less jobs to go around, according to a school board director.

Hundreds of brand new high school students with Sudbury's Rainbow Board will be heading to classes on Wednesday but Norm Blaseg, director of education for the Rainbow School Board, said that since the enrolment is still low there will be fewer teachers needed.

“Each year we do have to hire a few secondary folks in spite the declining enrolment, but they're for specific places, and that's as a result of retirements,” Blaseg said. “But typically at this point, we're not hiring a lot of net new jobs at the secondary level.”

However, Blaseg said in recent years the elementary school enrolment numbers in the Rainbow Board have started to recover a little bit compared to the longer period of decline

Where there isn’t a lack of enrolment is the Early Learning Kindergarten in Greater Sudbury.

All day kindergarten

Next week the Rainbow Board will welcome more than 1,500 four and five year olds into class, and facilities have been renovated to accommodate the young students.

This cohort of kids comes alongside the final rollout of the ELK programming.

“Maximum class sizes are a little bit larger and they require larger spaces, and so it's to play catch-up in terms of making sure the modifications to the buildings were actually taking hold, and by and large I think they have,” said Blaseg.

Early Learning Kindergarten, which is full-day programming, was first launched in Sudbury in 2010 and has been rolled-out incrementally since.

The twelve remaining Rainbow Board schools will begin the program next Wednesday.