One Month Later, Maskall Primary Still has Teacher Shortage

A month ago, several schools reported a shortage of teachers as the new school year began. Among them was Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School in Maskall Village, which faced a loss of three teachers across its pre-school, middle, and upper divisions. Fast forward a month, and the school has made significant progress, securing one teacher and on the verge of hiring a second. However, they are still searching for a teacher for their pre-school department. Today, Principal German Ramirez shared with News Five the strides the school has made towards full staffing and how they have been managing the ongoing shortage.

 

German Ramirez, Principal, Our Lady of Lourdes School, Maskall Village

“We have managed to secure one teacher coming this way to help us with our teacher shortage. We have been doing everything we can from our end to ensure that he remains in the community. It’s not something easy for him, but he’s adapting and we’re lucky to have him here. We’re still short of two teachers. We’re working on one, trying to make sure that we get his license. The license application process goes through some bureaucracy, and I guess some vetting. And so that is probably what is keeping us back from getting the other replacement in this community. We’re still working to try and secure the replacement for the preschool as well. So I work along with the general manager of Catholic public schools to try and see if we can secure the replacements as early as possible.”

 

Marion Ali

Explain to me how it’s been over the past month in getting the curriculum delivered in an effective way to these students with the shortage of three teachers.

 

German Ramirez

“It’s not been easy, I mean, we tried to stay in alignment with what we have to be doing for the month of September but jumping out of a classroom and going into another, you don’t get to do what you need to do as effectively as possible. So, what we try to do is to ensure that our children are busy, getting their printed packages for them to be working on while I’m there. I can explain while I’m out, they work on their own with some limited supervision from the teacher nearby.”