Joan Hamilton, the principal of the Roberta Bondar Public School in Brampton, Ont.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The Ontario government, after years of stressing excellence in education, is subverting its own stated purposes: it is insisting on the primacy of seniority in hiring. Its rules place such a premium on tenure that they practically cry out to principals to be naughty and break the rules, or at least the spirit of the rules, to hire the candidate they believe is the best fit for the job.
The job category is known as Long Term Occasional – someone who fills in, say, for a teacher on maternity leave. These are important jobs in most schools. A maternity leave may last a full school year. A school may have 10 per cent or more of its teaching staff made up of LTOs. And the LTOs have a leg up in hiring for permanent jobs.
Under Regulation 274, which began as an appeasement to a union during last year's bitter work-to-rule campaign, principals need to interview the five candidates with the most seniority from a list of LTOs. The system is not completely rigid: principals who aren't satisfied with those candidates can go to step two, and interview another three from the list, without regard to seniority; and if they are still unsatisfied, the principals can go to step three, and hire off-list – essentially, whomever they want. The system is transparent, in that the principals have to document why they weren't satisfied at each step. If principals stand up for the best candidate, will a storm of union grievances follow?
The tradeoff doesn't seem worth it. Greater accountability and transparency, less commitment to excellence and "fit" – a school may need someone who can engage its pupils with technology, or who has a track record of reaching tough, at-risk students, or who possesses strong literacy teaching skills. Or perhaps the principal knows a talented teacher who reaches kids. Why shouldn't the principal be able to hire that teacher? The hiring decision "should be based on making sure we have the right teacher in the right classroom," Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, says.
It's left to the principals to fight for that principle.