EXCLUSIVE: Teacher absenteeism cost TDSB nearly $100M last year

By Cristina Howorun

Last year, Canada’s largest school board — the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) — spent $96.5 million replacing absent teachers due to illness, religious or personal reasons.

It’s a marginal increase over last year, but essentially amounts to $5,622 for every one of the school’s 17,000 full time teachers.

“It’s something that we’re monitoring because it does need to be addressed,” Education Minister Lisa Thompson told CityNews. “We are working with our team members in the ministry to come up with some strategies to address it.”

That’s $100 million that isn’t being devoted to special education, books or resources for students and teachers.

A 2017 report by the auditor-general revealed that more than 50 school boards found that usage of sick days increased by about 30 per cent — from nine days in the 2011-2012 school year, to 11.6 in 2015-2016.

Last year, the Toronto District Catholic School Board (TDCSB) spent $33.6 million covering teacher absences, an increase of nearly $7 million over the year before.

According to calculations conducted by CityNews, the TDSB is spending approximately $4,543 on short and long-term absenteeism for each of its 17,000 teachers, totaling about $77.2 million.

There’s been a marked increase in the use of sick days since 2012. That’s when the previous Liberal government slashed teachers’ sick day allotment from 20 to 11, and ended the practice of allowing them to carry over unused days to following years.

When asked if this policy switch could have had an impact on more teachers taking time off, Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation downplayed the connection.

“Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation,” he argued. “The fact that they’ve been happening at the same time doesn’t point to a causal connection. We’ve seen at the same time an increase of inclusion of special needs students, which I’m not arguing — but when it happens there have to be appropriate supports in place.”

“I appreciate that’s a big figure,” Bischof said of the costs absorbed by the TDSB.

Bischof added that violence against teachers is on the rise and could be contributing to absenteeism.

“We’re very concerned about the increase in violence in our schools and in our classrooms,” he said. “We have members who are injured significantly on a regular basis, sometimes they are minor injuries that result in a couple of days off, but not too long ago I was speaking with a relatively young teacher who suffered a concussion at the hands of her student and who was off for 18 months.

“When that sort of thing is happening and those instances aren’t properly addressed or prevented in the first place, I’m not surprised that there’s an increase in absenteeism.”

The Peel District School Board appears to be bucking the trend, spending $26 million to cover absences in 2016-17, and only $25 million last year. That’s about $2,900 for every one of the boards 8,607 teachers.

The board wasn’t able to provide a reason for the reduction.

Teacher absences are expected to be among several issues on the bargaining table next August, when teachers’ contracts expire.

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