No job cuts for teachers: minister

Education Minister Derek Mombourquette says no teachers will lose their jobs next school year.

In a telephone interview on Friday from his Sydney whitney Pier constituency, Mombourquette said he wanted to reassure teachers, especially with reports this week that staffing levels will change in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

“Everyone will have a position,” he said. “So, there's no cuts to education funding from the government. There are no layoffs. What we are experiencing in the Halifax area is we have a large graduating class this year, so this is a process we go through every year with every centre, where we look at enrolments within schools, and that determines staffing complements.”

Mombourquette said the Halifax situation involves around 16 schools under the Halifax Regional Centre for Education that are affected by a decision to change the primary class age cutoff from October to Dec. 31 in 2008, creating a larger cohort that are now graduating.

This means more staff will move to different schools or have their assignment changed, Mombourquette added in an Op-ed emailed to news outlets later Friday.

“Across the province, more than 260 new school staff — psychologists, education assistants, guidance counsellors, autism support staff and more — are being hired to support students in the classroom,” he said in the email.

Mombourquette said the provincial education budget will rise by $112 million, including $15 million more for inclusive education.

“Everybody's going to have a position,” he told The Chronicle Herald. “We're actually hiring more teachers. So we're hiring another 70 teachers across the system. Particularly in the HRM, we're hiring an additional 22 guidance counsellors to help support the schools.

“I think the biggest message I really want to reiterate to teachers is that I can't thank you enough for everything you've done this year to support our kids during the pandemic and I want to reassure them all that there will be a position for you. We're investing more money, we're not cutting any money. So we will go though the allocations to determine where everyone will land, but that we are not reducing any funding toward our education budget.”

Mombourquette also provided an update on home learning in the province, thanking everyone in the system for adapting so quickly.

“The response we're receiving from families is very positive,” he said. “The work that was done leading up to it by not only our department but by teachers and the IWK and other health-care professionals has really shown we've learned a lot from the first round about home learning.”

Mombourquette said investments Nova Scotia has made in technology to facilitate on-line learning has paid off for students.

“We were able to adapt quickly to at-home learning this time around,” he said. “And depending on the epidemiology, we'll be equally as fast in reopening the system if the epidemiology permits us to do so.”

He said it has not yet been determined if and when the term will resume in schools or if it'll be at-home learning for the rest of the school year.

“We're in those conversations daily with public health because we're looking across the province at epidemiology,” Mombourquette said. “We know that, of course, the cases of COVID are much higher in certain areas of the province. We also have some of the areas that have lower cases. So, we're looking at a number of scenarios now. There's nothing determined.

“Ideally — and I've said this publicly many times — we want our kids in the classroom. My focus is to try to get them back there if the epidemiology allows it.”

He added that the government will “have more to say” in the next few weeks as epidemiology develops.