Human resources are naturally a huge part of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division's operations and in fact they envelop over 72 per cent of its annual budget.
So with that in mind, the division's trustees were fully absorbed in an update report from Gord Husband, the superintendent of human resources, when they met last Thursday afternoon for their monthly business session in Weyburn.
"There are two main units in the human resources department," said Husband in a telephone interview following the presentation. "The first is the actual human element and the other is payroll and, of course, they are linked yet separate in many ways, so by splitting the department into two units like this, we've achieved a higher level of efficiencies," Husband said.
Then there are the various sectors within the HR chain, such as teachers, support staff, bus drivers, maintenance staff and so on.
"So we have specified categories and then specialized categories within them, such as in the teaching profession we have 555.19 full-time equivalent positions," he said.
Those positions are filled by about 640 actual bodies. Out of that there are certain teachers who are responders to intervention (42.3 positions) and those who are assigned to personal program plans as learning support teachers (33.8 positions) along with the nearly 448 classroom educators.
The teacher to student ratio factor is always part of the annual mix when assigning certain educators for certain schools and specific classrooms, Husband explained.
The education assistants take up another 166.7 positions in the system, a number that has remained fairly steady over the past three years, the superintendent said.
Speaking with the trustees, Husband provided information regarding age demographics within the Cornerstone system that embraces 38 schools including four elementary and one high school in Estevan.
As far as teaching staffs go, Husband's department broke them down into four age divisions; those from the age of 22 to 30, another group from 31 to 40, followed by the third group who were aged 41 to 50, and the final veteran group of teachers aged 51 and above.
This assists the human resources team with their recruitment and forward planning as they assess the possibilities of upcoming retirements in various sectors.
"So far recruitment for the school division has generally gone well. We struggle in filling teaching positions such as senior science instructors in smaller rural schools, but there is a good pool of educators out there now and the job market is evolving. But we also have a group of baby boomers near retirement," Husband said. "So we still do some crystal ball homework, but we know that 55 per cent of our teachers have more than 15 years of experience so in the realm of a 30-year career, that's a good balance."
Husband went on to say that data is collected on a regular basis from each school which helps them predict what school populations are going to be from one year to the next thanks to a pretty clear tracking of impending kindergarten registrations and historical/traditional enrolments from each school over longer stretches of time. This helps them ascertain registration trends and plan accordingly.
"I feel that this board wants to do a lot of data-based decision making, so we do our best to provide them with what they can use to help them make those decisions. By giving them this kind of information, it can help them focus and nail down what they have to pursue and what we have to pursue in terms of personnel each year," Husband said in conclusion.
Cornerstone's chairwoman, Carol Flynn, said she found the information compelling and very useful. She said the process being used will help Husband's department become even more efficient at recruiting and doing it earlier each year.
"We are seeing so much planning for the future. I know the board is strong on that and so is the staff, so something like what Gord gave us is very useful for everyone," Flynn said.
The board also received a transportation update from Larry Ursu, manager of transportation and fleet services, who brought them new information on the ongoing struggle to recruit and retain bus drivers. He also spoke about the challenges of the past spring and summer when many grid and access roads were under water due to spring floods, making the routine collection and delivery of students to their respective schools more challenging than ever. This also added to the kilometres that were driven and the costs associated with the additional travel distances and times.
Flynn said she was pleased to hear though, that the average age of the buses themselves is now well within the target and the average school bus in the system is now around three-years old.
