Due to the shortage of qualified teachers, the Sorel-Tracy school service center intends to reassign remedial teachers to be class teachers for the next school year. A decision that will lead to “disastrous consequences”, worry several hundred teachers.
In total, nine remedial teachers will have to go into a “field where there is a need”. It is therefore approximately one third of remedial teachers who will have to go and teach at the primary level.
“The shortage of teachers forces us to review all the options available to us in order to recover qualified teachers,” reads a letter sent to remedial teachers affected by this decision, a letter that The Press has obtained. It is signed by the director of human resources of the CSS de Sorel-Tracy, Marc Vigneault.
The spokesperson for the CSS de Sorel-Tracy explains that faced with the shortage of teachers, we are in “solution mode”.
“This orientation alone will allow more than 200 students to benefit from a legally qualified teacher for the entire 2023-2024 school year,” writes Laurence Cournoyer.
The president of the Syndicat de l’enseignement du Bas-Richelieu, Lisette Trépanier, does not make the same calculation. She says that by reassigning these nine remedial teachers, it is rather “400 students who will not have direct services”.
Remedial teachers, she says, did not study to be a classroom teacher. “What will happen? They go [postuler] somewhere else and will leave,” she fears.
It is towards the private sector that Émilie *, a remedial teacher who risks finding herself a class teacher next year, is considering turning.
“We are asked to go and teach on the pretext that we have a patent. My career goal was to be a remedial teacher,” she says. Would a heart surgeon be asked to perform brain operations on the pretext that he has his license to practice medicine? she illustrates.
“A Band-Aid on an Open Fracture”
Next year, 14.5 remedial teachers will be needed in the primary schools of the CSS de Sorel-Tracy and these people “will always be in post”, assures its spokesperson.
Émilie wonders how they will manage to provide good service for the students, while the 23 current remedial teachers are struggling to meet the demand this year.
“We are already in the prioritization which hurts the heart. It pains me to imagine what it will be like next year,” says Émilie.
A petition was launched by parents to ask the leaders of the school service center to maintain the current services in remedial education. So far, just over a thousand people have signed it.
In a letter addressed to the leaders of the CSS and signed by more than 200 teachers, we read that the shortage is far from being specific to the school service center of Sorel-Tracy.
“A few remedial teachers alone will not be able to solve the shortage of teachers, neither here nor in the province. This way of thinking is similar to the application of a bandage on an open fracture…”, one can read.
Reducing remedial services “will lead to disastrous consequences for students at risk: prevention among the youngest and screening will be jeopardized, among other things,” they continue.
At the CSS de Sorel-Tracy, it is estimated that for the next school year, 60 classes will not be able to have a legally qualified teacher.
“To date, for the 2022-2023 school year, 14% of teaching has been provided by non-legally qualified teachers”, writes Laurence Cournoyer.
We should not forget that remedial teachers come to the aid of these teachers who do not have a teaching certificate, observes Lisette Trépanier.
* Fictitious first name