GUELPH – The Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) is “experiencing tremendous financial pressures.”
That’s from director Peter Sovran, who said staff absences are the biggest cause.
The cost of covering staff absences has increased by about 67% since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We can’t sustain this. We don’t receive enough funding to offset the cost.”
Sovran said he is “really concerned now, because I think we’ve literally tried everything that’s within our realm of influence, and we don’t seem to be moving the needle.”
The issue isn’t individuals misusing sick days, Sovran said. “There is something else going on, and we just don’t know what it is.”
The problem goes beyond the UGDSB – boards throughout Ontario report increased staff absences, as do other industries across the world.
It’s been an agenda item at the UGDSB executive council’s weekly meetings for well over a year, Sovran said, and officials are working with union partners and collecting and analyzing data and feedback from staff to pinpoint causes and solutions.
“This is a significant piece of work for every member of the senior team, every single week,” he said.
“And what we’ve really learned is that this is a complex, widespread issue with, it seems, no simple solution.
“I think we need a lot more help on this,” Sovran told the Advertiser, “and to look at this more globally.”
Problems with absences
From the board’s perspective there are two big problems with absences: relationships and cost.
For staff and students to form strong relationships, they need to show up consistently, Sovran said.
And financially, temporarily replacing staff takes a big toll.
“We have ended up in a deficit situation in the last couple of years, which has largely been as a result of the staff replacement costs,” Sovran said.
In the 2023-24 school year, the board spent nearly $20 million on replacement staff (supply teachers). Prior to the pandemic, Sovran said the board spent less than $12 million annually on replacement staff.
He said the number of staff absences, and the cost of replacement, has increased steadily since the pandemic.
“Our revenue has not increased by that amount by any means,” he noted.
“When we allocate funds to offset replacement costs, we have steadily increased that number each year. But we never imagined that we would get to a $20-million level.”
Increased staff replacement costs make up a “very substantial chunk” of the board’s budget, Sovran said.
For the 2024-25 school year, expenses in the revised budget total over $512 million, and revenues reach about $505.4 million.
“We are really fortunate at the Upper Grand,” Sovran said, “as we have a healthy reserve in our bank accounts.
“We have been and will continue to be able to financially weather this for another couple of years,” he said. “But it’s unsustainable beyond that.”
For the current, previous and next school years, the board budgeted to overspend to support literacy and math initiatives, and received ministry pre-approval to spend reserves on these areas.
“However, because of primarily the overspending in replacement costs, we have added to that yearly deficit over each of the last two years,” Sovran said.
And if the board is “unable to reconcile our costs, rounding out the 2024-25 school year,” then the ministry’s pre-approval to use reserves for literacy and math improvements is “really in jeopardy.”
Making cuts
“Any adjustment we are making currently in terms of revised estimates will be away from the classroom,” Sovran said, but there’s “no doubt” the ripple effects of the cuts will impact students.
He said the board has “made as many adjustments as possible to every facet of the organization,” avoiding direct cuts to classrooms.
For this school year, cuts include pausing technology spending, reducing the senior team and scaling back professional development, including eliminating conferences involving travel, Sovran said.
Technology cuts mean not replacing devices such as Chromebooks that don’t work or are not compatible with necessary cyber security measures, he said.
During a finance and facilities committee meeting on Dec. 17, chair Ralf Mesenbrink said a pause in technology upgrades could not be sustained for long.
Sovran expressed “complete” agreement with Mesenbrink, calling it an “extended pause, rather than an elimination.
“If a device is to the point where we can’t add in the most recent security update to it, then it becomes a vulnerability,” he said.
“So keeping up with that is critically important.”
Superintendent Peggy Blair, who joined the UGDSB in June 2023, retired at the end of December, and the board is eliminating her position through attrition.
Sovran said although reducing the size of the senior team won’t come close to recovering the replacement costs, it’s “just responsible for us to begin [cuts to] the senior team and move outwards from there.
“The workload carried by the members of the senior team is enormous,” Sovran said during the meeting.
“And so retracting the senior team by one does mean that everyone on the senior team is working that much harder, with a little bit less time for all the things that are spilling over onto their plates.”
Mesenbrink noted this “sends a message to everyone that we are doing everything we can to look for places where we can reduce without affecting the classroom.”
“We’ve asked every single department to look at efficiencies,” Sovran said. And when people retire or leave, “we are not replacing them immediately. If we are replacing them, we are replacing them on a temporary basis.”
Sovran said when those cuts are combined, less than $2 million is available for reallocation, which doesn’t go far to cover the increase in staff replacement costs.
Though the board is “going to do absolutely everything” to avoid staffing cuts, Sovran said “85 per cent of our annual operating budget is our staffing numbers. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room.
“Making up the differential without getting into staff adjustments is going to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.”
And Sovran said the UGDSB is already “fairly lean” when it comes to staff outside of classrooms.
Possible causes
“The jump from just under $12 million to just under $20 million in (staff) replacement costs over a very short period of time seems to really point to something [causing] staff who regularly would be coming to work to find it challenging,” Sovran said.
The board released a survey about staff absences to its approximately 7,000 staff and received well over 2,000 responses, Sovran said.
Reasons for staff absences include illness, medical appointments, professional learning, mental health, stress, being overwhelmed and family responsibilities, he noted.
“Difficulty being able to schedule a medical appointment outside of the regular work day has become a very significant issue for many, many staff,” since the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
“Family responsibilities continue to be one of the big ones … putting a considerable strain on staff” he added, including caring for children, elderly parents and other relatives.
Sovran shared a quote from the survey that he said conveys a theme: “I really need to be at work to meet the needs of my students. I don’t feel pressure to attend – I really want to attend. But there are all of these other competing interests.”
He noted UGDSB staff absences are “considerably higher on Fridays.
“We have no understanding as to why that is, and we are not going to speculate as to why,” he said.
Working with unions
UGDSB officials meet with union representatives every other week to share concerns and work together to find solutions, Sovran said.
They’re working together to raise awareness about what is available to staff in terms of employee assistance programs, as well as training on how to code an absence (recognizing what constitutes a personal illness, family day or other reason for absence).
“It’s truly important that staff know what is available to them and how to also properly take advantage of the coding so that we have accurate information,” he said.
‘A wicked problem’
“We’ve been at it for well over a year and we don’t seem to have any better answers as to how to make these adjustments,” Sovran said.
“There’s no indication that we will receive additional funding. And even if we did, I’m not sure that ultimately that’s the long term solution.
“We’ve been focused on ‘how do we get students and staff more present more often so that they can form those good solid relationships.’
“Additional funding for replacement costs doesn’t really replace that.”
Sovran said board officials “have heard comments that we are somehow blaming staff, and we are not.
“We are really trying to understand what’s changed. Not only in our district, but across the province.
“I would describe it as a wicked problem,” he said.
