Photo: Castanet

The Kamloops-Thompson school district and CUPE 3500 say job cuts in the recently approved SD73 budget are devastating for teaching staff and support workers.

Unions representing Kamloops teachers and school support staff say their members are "devastated" by job cuts in the recently approved 2025-26 School District 73 budget — and some job classifications will be disappearing altogether.

Last month, the SD73 board of education approved its 2025-26 budget, which included dozens of job cuts to teaching staff and support workers to offset a $5.8 million shortfall from rising financial pressures.

Support staff were cut by 46.5 full-time equivalent and CUPE 3500 president Dawn Armstrong said that will translate to 54 jobs being cut.

She said five trades and maintenance positions, 17 custodial positions and 32 other jobs are being cut, including all librarian assistants and classroom science assistants.

“Science assistants are helping to ensure the safety of students in science classes where they encounter harmful substances, those people are entirely gone,” Armstrong said.

“Library assistants help support students in their literacy goals and ensure the seamless operation of libraries, those people are totally gone.”

About 25.5 full-time equivalent positions for teaching staff have been cut, including seven FTE positions for counsellors and learning assistance teachers, 10.5 FTE positions for district-level teachers, and eight FTE positions for district-level secondary allocations.

But Kamloops-Thompson Teachers Association president Laurel Macpherson said that won’t translate to any job losses, only less work time. She said KTTA members were being “surplussed.”

“It doesn’t mean losing their jobs or their employment with SD73, when they have to surplus people there’s a process for them with our collective agreement to pick available jobs as they come up,” Macpherson said.

“We have been assured by SD73 that everybody will be working. It’s not that that people won’t work next year, it’s just that it may not be their preferred assignment.”

SD73 superintendent Rhonda Nixon told Castanet after the budget was approved that no classroom teachers or certified education assistants are being cut.

'People are panicking'

Armstrong said some of CUPE’s members are qualified to perform other jobs in the school district and are hoping to remain employed. But for the rest, Armstrong said there isn’t enough time to become qualified before the next school year.

She said the union has been told D73 will be flexible in helping some workers remain employed with the district, but they haven’t received anything certain yet.

“People's lives are upended, people are panicking — this is their job, they're doing the job because they love the job, and now they can't do it anymore,” Armstrong said.

“I would just use this as an opportunity to put a plea out to the provincial government to sit down at the table and take a look at the funding model and really entertain other ideas. Listen to the public, listen to the unions, listen to the people that do the work.”

Macpherson said the cuts are devastating for KTTA members and for teachers across the province facing their own financial pressures in other school districts.

“We just wish the government would just catch up with the times, the funding with the times,” Macpherson said.

“Teachers are tired of working with less all the time, it seems like you’re doing more with less and government needs to step up. That’s the bottom line.”

The SD73 district parent advisory council held a rally last week to drum up support as they call on provincial government for a change in how B.C. education is funded. Alongside other DPACs, they plan to bring their cause to the legislature in Victoria by the end of the month.