School District 23 has already allocated most of the 2 million dollars it received from the province following last year's Supreme Court ruling.
Superintendent Kevin Kaardal says the funding is equivalent to over 45 teachers, who are being staffed according to proposals from schools.
“36 schools were given an allocation, 33 of those school’s proposals have come back with an agreement already and as a result of that we’ve already staffed, and that means people are actually in buildings, about half of the 45 teachers that we expected this would cover”
As an added bonus, Kaardal says the funding will likely cover even more teachers, meaning an additional 5- 7 teachers on top of the 45.
He says the new teachers are all working as support staff in existing classrooms.
The province gave a total of 50 million dollars to districts as an interim deal after the BC Teacher's Federation won the right to negotiate class size and composition.
Negotiations for a final deal for future years is still ongoing, but it’s expected to result in smaller class sizes, which Kardaal says will be a challenge.
“We’re at 104% capacity. We’ve been working with the government on a number of new school projects we hope to have announced. If that happens, it’s still a couple of years away before they open and if we’re adding a significant amount of teachers and we’re already at 104% capacity, where do we put them?”
Reaching a final deal could take a couple of months.