Hanover Teachers' Association responds to school board getting involved in hiring teachers

Many teachers in the Hanover School Division are concerned about the school board's decision to get involved in the hiring process. 

Last week, the Hanover School Board voted 5-4 in support of a motion that will see trustees involved in the hiring of both music and physical education teachers. They will be hired the same way vice-principals are hired. 

Hanover Teachers Association President Kevin Martens says, along with a number of board members, he believes this is a step backward.

“It's been 14 years since that practice of being involved on the operation side has ended and they realized that giving vision for the superintendents and the school division was their most important responsibility.”  

In addition, Martens says there is provincial legislation that outlines how school boards are to hire administrators and those administrators are to be tasked with hiring staff. 

"The board is really involved with the hiring of the decision makers within the school division, so not only the superintendents, but also the principals. From there, the legislation really says that those people that they've put in charge should go forward and create the best school teams that they possibly can.” 

As the head of the HTA, Martens says he has quite a number of concerns about this new policy.  

“If the trustees are looking to jump from a governance role into an operations role, everything really starts to slow down. My concern is that as we get further along in a teacher shortage situation, we can't afford to slow down in hiring and unfortunately, that's exactly what's going to end up happening.” 

Martens notes he listened to the conversation around the board table and ultimately does not agree with some of the rationale behind this push for involvement in hiring.  

“It seemed that part of their argument was to focus on music and phys ed. teachers was because this was going to lead, in some way, to an increase in community engagement but I really believe that they've missed the mark on that idea because all the teachers of the school contribute to a community.” 

He adds “You've got teachers of other subjects that are emailing, they're texting, they're phoning, they're having face-to-face conversations with parents, building great working relationships, and I just feel that all aspects of community life build a strong community.” 

Since the school board meeting last week, Martens says many teachers have reached to raise issue with this decision. 

“What we really need them as trustees to do is to spend their energy creating policies that are going to help to guide the work of the principals and the teachers and students, and also give a path forward for parent expectations, but they're not going to be able to do that as much if they're going to be spending a lot of time on the operations side.” 

Martens says the HTA is still working out how best to proceed. 

“I think for us as an association, I think like it's still fairly new, them putting that motion forward so we're still just studying it to see as far as how that complies with our own policies and bylaws and legislation, then we'll decide from there which direction we go.”