Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 05/00) - At a time of the year when young children are anxiously awaiting the end of the school term, education facilitators and school board officials are agonizing over the annual resume shuffle.

Salary concerns, isolation and poor housing conditions are prompting some of the most qualified instructors to gather their belongings and move on to more promising teaching opportunities in the south, but that's a problem education officials are accustomed to.

The obstacle now stems from an ever-increasing demand for teachers in southern Canada and the United States. That has resulted in large quantities of soon-to-be university graduates being hired by southern employers even before obtaining their degrees.

James Anderson, director of the Beaufort-Delta Education Council, said the number of resumes the district receives is far lower than in previous years.

"I remember about 10 or 15 years ago we would get 5,000 applications per year and perhaps now we're getting fewer than 500.

"I'm led to believe that there are a number of teachers that are either set to retire, about to retire or are retiring and the opening up of positions in southern Canada has led to not as many people applying up North," said Anderson.

Pat Thomas, president of the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association, has heard the same complaint from each and every school board and education council in the NWT and Nunavut.

"Certainly we've heard stories of large teacher recruitment in the south and large hotel banquet rooms filled with teacher recruiting initiatives from the United States and other areas in Canada," Thomas said.

"It's a huge problem for the North," she added.

Ray Young, principal of Diamond Jeness school in Hay River, said just recently he heard representatives from a school district in the State of California visited the University of Alberta and hired a large number of students just graduating with a Bachelor of Education degree.

"There's talks in the south of signing bonuses for teachers - $5,000 to $25,000," Young said.

The only solution, Young believes, is for the GNWT to take a similar approach.

"The government will paint a different picture. They say there isn't a shortage and it's all hearsay. I find the quality is good out there but the experience is very lacking," he said.

Young fears that if education districts in the Northwest Territories cannot hire good quality teachers in the future, schools will be forced to increase the number of students in each classroom or cancel programs such as music, art and French.

"In the past the government seems to be always two or three years behind the problem, so it may take a two-by-four to hit them in the head, so to speak, before they realize that there is a problem," says Young.