‘A lot of scrambling’: Calgary public schools strained by substitute teacher shortage

As the school year comes to a close, educators are hoping to see the end to a major substitute teacher shortage.

It’s an issue that has many Alberta schools — specifically those in Calgary’s public system — scrambling to cover classes.

Data obtained by CTV News shows from the beginning of the school year to March 31, the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) saw a 19 per cent vacancy rate in substitute teaching jobs.

In April, the school board had a substitute vacancy rate of 20.3 per cent. One week that saw an average of 209 daily requests go unfilled.

That marks an increase from the two previous school years, which had vacancy rates of 16.3 per cent in 2024-25 and 17.3 per cent in 2023-24.

The CBE says the numbers typically ebb and flow, and April’s data “is not a reflection of the entire school year.”

But across the board, it’s enough to contribute to teachers’ burnout, causing staff to sometimes go into work sick and put off precious professional development plans.

Middle school teacher Amrit Rai Nannan said the problem has led to several disruptions to her usual routine.

“If you’re lucky enough to have filled your need and have enough substitutes for your school, we might redeploy so another school who is super short or has no (subs) would get one or two of yours,” she told CTV News.

“The tiny little time you’ve carved out to get anything done while you’re in your school day, we end up losing that. You start internally covering.”

It’s a pattern Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling recognizes well. He says he’s had several conversations with teachers who have spent “a lot of time scrambling” to cover other classes.

“This shortage of substitute teachers is not new to anybody who’s been working in education for the last couple years,” he said.

“You have teachers (that) lose their prep time, administrators are teaching classes instead of doing the work they need to do that day… so it impacts the system in a variety of different ways.

“It adds to the complexity, it adds to the stress and burnout that teachers are feeling.”

A matter of hiring more

Schilling suggested the substitute shortage comes from teachers leaving the profession in the province. School boards — which typically have a roster of substitute teachers they’ll pull from — will hire from that roster when a permanent job becomes vacant.

When that roster gets depleted, Schilling said, the scramble to cover classes begins.

But it’s not just in-class teachers that are needed in the province. In February, the Alberta government added 476 complexity teams to address disruptive classroom behaviour.

Schilling said many of those positions have been filled by teachers previously on substitute teacher rosters, exacerbating the shortage.

In Calgary, CBE spokesperson Mike Nelson said the public school board has hired more than 118 teachers into both classrooms and classroom complexity teams. Many of those hires came directly from the sub roster, he said.

Adding more teachers was at the top of the list for the more than 51,000 teachers across Alberta who walked off the job last fall. Striking educators decried overpopulated, complex classroom conditions and urged the provincial government to add more educators to ease the strain.

In a statement to CTV News, Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ office pointed to the classroom complexity teams as one of the ways to address adding more teachers to the workforce.

He also pointed to the expedited certification pathway for education students, and recruitment and retention programs put in place to help bring more teachers to rural communities.

“Alberta continues to graduate and attract more than 2,100 new teachers and approximately 800 out-of-province teachers each year,” the ministry wrote in a statement.

“Our government remains committed to increasing overall teacher supply and helping school boards address pressures like substitute shortages by strengthening recruitment, retention and workforce flexibility across the province.”

— with files from Alesia Fieldberg and Timm Bruch