Local school board issues lay-off notices to elementary teachers

The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board has issued lay-off notices to 71 elementary teachers as it deals with declining enrolment and a multi-million-dollar deficit, according to a union representative.

David Berger, president of the Kawartha Pine Ridge local of the Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario, said he hopes the board will be able to recall most of those teachers over the summer as the board’s financial situation becomes clearer.

“But it is unlikely that the board will be able to hire them all back,” Berger said in an email.

School board trustee Paul Brown said in an email the board began sending out lay-off notices earlier this month in order to comply with the timelines required by a staff collective agreement. 

But the staffing situation is still very much in flux, and the board has already been able to recall 14 of those employees, he said, adding he expects more will be re-hired before September.

“We anticipate that at the completion of the process there will likely be an estimated 20 redundant full-time equivalent teaching positions,” he said.

KPRDSB warned recently that it may need to shrink its workforce and cut spending on student transportation to eliminate a projected deficit of nearly $16.6 million.

Those warnings came in advance of the Ford government’s recent announcement of funding levels for the 2025/26 school year. Those funding numbers were released last week, and KPRDSB is set to get a four percent funding increase, for a total of $503.4 million, according to figures provided by Education Minister Paul Calandra’s office.

Brown said KPRDSB staff are now reviewing the details “to understand the board’s funding position.” But he said staffing reductions are still coming, which he blamed on declining enrolment.

The funding boost each board receives varies based on a variety of factors, including enrolment numbers. But KPRDSB’s amount was calculated based on outdated projections that showed enrolment growing by 642 students next school year, Brown said. Enrolment is currently projected to decline by 380 students, so that will affect the amount of funding KPRDSB receives, he said.

Staff will “finalize staffing plans” in the coming weeks, as they try to reduce the number of layoffs following the funding announcement, he said.

Berger, the union president, called the provincial funding increase “a drop in the bucket” after “successive years of underfunding.”

A local representative for the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) agreed, saying the funding increase comes “nowhere near the needs that have expanded in our system.”

As a result, there will be “fewer supports for students, constraints and reductions on transportation, and fewer choices and pathways for students to learn,” Dave Warda, bargaining unit president for OSSTF District 14, said in an email.

The provincial funding announcement came after the release of the provincial budget on May 15, which was delayed because of the winter provincial election.

“Finding out what the final funding is at the end of May prevents school boards from making sound financial decisions in the short and long term,” Warda said.

The provincial government maintains that it is making “record investments” in Ontario schools. Schools province-wide are set to receive a 3.2 percent core funding increase next school year, for a total of $30.3 billion.

With multiple boards facing scrutiny for their spending in recent months, Education Minister Paul Calandra said in a release last week that he will be “relentless in holding school boards accountable on the way they spend these funds.”

“I have been clear with school boards across the province that we expect every dollar to be spent on directly supporting students, parents and teachers,” he said.