Certified teacher struggling to land full-time job in spite of shortage

As schools turn to university students and graduates without a teachers' degree to cope with a shortage, a certified teacher from Dieppe says she's been trying to find full-time work without success.

Dieppe resident Allie Fanjoy was hired as a supply teacher for the coming school year in late August, but she says the process was slow and frustrating.

More frustrating, she says, was learning that schools in the anglophone system are still short by 32 teachers — and three districts of the four are relying on 132 people on local permit contracts.

Local permit contracts enable school districts to hire people without teaching degrees, and some with no university degree at all. 

"If you have a shortage, and you're crying for certified teachers, why are you not contacting the certified teachers who want to come back to the school system, instead of relying directly on local permits?" Fanjoy said in an interview.

"It's been a very frustrating summer."

When Fanjoy graduated in 2002 with a bachelor of education degree and certifications to teach K-8 and high school English, she says the system wasn't struggling to find teachers.

She spent nearly a decade working as a supply teacher — where hours were not guaranteed — before changing careers to truck driving. 

But decades later, the New Brunswick Teachers' Association is warning of a potential crisis in the anglophone system, as it projects more than 1,000 teachers will retire in the next five years. 

Seeing comments from the NBTA and the province about the urgent need, in June Fanjoy said she applied to the Anglophone East School District's general certified teachers pool, and in August she applied to individual job postings.

But she said she never heard anything back. 

When the province held a virtual job fair in August, Fanjoy decided to attend and was directed to contact the superintendent for her region. She was contacted the next day for a general interview but wasn't offered a full-time teaching position. 

Last week, NBTA president Peter Legacy cautioned the province against continuing to rely on local permit contracts to fill teaching jobs. 

"We think about hiring those without an education degree — I would hate to see that become the norm, an accepted practise in the province," he said at a press conference.