With a surging student population and the first budget in years about adding not subtracting, the President of the Kamloops Thompson Teachers Association is keeping her fingers crossed.

KTTA President Amanda Jensen-LaBar says teacher recruitment and retention issues continue to be of concern in the district, although there have been some improvements.

So will the growing student population and better fiscal situation result in more teacher hiring?

“I certainly hope so,” she said. “We certainly have been of the position that we’ve been short teachers for a number of years and it’s created a lot of stress in our schools particularly on non enrolling teachers, so those are your teacher-librarians, learning assistants, teachers, special education resource and elementary or prep teachers when there are vacancies that need to be filled.”

Jensen-LaBar says hiring new teachers needs to be done just to cover off those on leave, sick, or who are retiring never mind the growing demand based on an influx of students.

She adds hiring teachers into the system, is not just a Kamloops-Thompson specific issue, it’s an issue all over British Columbia.