Parent group raising funds to restore teachers' home, attract staff to Mayne Island

A group of parents is gathering funds to restore a never-used residence on Mayne Island in hopes it will attract teachers to live and work there.

Jackie Henry, whose two children are among the 29 K-7 students at Mayne Island School, said the facility has had challenges in finding and retaining staff due to its relatively limited access and the difficulty in finding accommodation on the Gulf Island in southwest British Columbia.

"People come and they teach for a year, and then they don't come back. A lot of the reason is the commute. Most of our teacher pool is from Salt Spring Island, so they'll come over on the school boat and they have to leave the house at 5 a.m., and they get home at 7 [p.m.]," Henry told CBC News.

"It's a challenging commute for people, so they don't tend to last long."

This past year, Henry said the teacher for grades 3-7 took a new job after just two weeks working on Mayne Island and the school was unable to fill the position for half of the school year because applicants couldn't find accommodation.

That class had a series of rotating, on-call teachers, and when no one was available the principal would teach.

But now the parent advisory committee (PAC) has turned its attention to an abandoned teacherage, which was first brought to Mayne Island in the 1980s, with the aim of restoring it to provide accommodation.

Henry said the PAC thinks the empty house, which was never used, presents the perfect solution — and the Gulf Islands School District, which owns the house, agrees.

The PAC has now signed an agreement to restore the teacherage, with the school district handing over the property and parents raising the funds to complete the work.

The school district has agreed to rent the restored house to teachers and school staff at a below-market rate, and keep that money in trust to maintain the building in the future.

"It is a credit to the Mayne Island community and the PAC leadership that saw an opportunity and approached the district with an idea," school district superintendent Scott Benwell said in a statement.

Henry said the response from the Mayne Island community has been passionate so far. Many islanders have donated time, money and resources to the PAC to get the job done, including the owner of the island's Home Hardware, who donated a large portion of the materials needed for the restoration.

Someone from Sidney, B.C., meanwhile, has offered to donate a heat pump system for the house — something the PAC hadn't even considered because it would have been beyond its budget.

The PAC is aiming to raise $80,000 for the restoration and within one week of fundraising had already received $10,000.

"The biggest take-home is that this is a creative way to solve a problem. The community is coming together. And we're not trying to build a new building for $10 million … this is something that exists. It's a taxpayer resource that's being underutilized," Henry said.

"We just want to get it back to working order and then have it as something that's going to benefit the future of the Mayne Island School and its students and teachers."

In a statement, the Ministry of Education acknowledged that the tight labour market has affected school districts across the province.

It said it's working with school districts, unions and other partners to address challenges with recruitment and retention of teachers, and pointed to measures like increased wages, increased spaces in teacher education programs, and reduced processing times for teacher certification.