Seniority Demystified...

I often receive questions about how your seniority is used to determine who at the school is declared surplus. The seniority list can seem a bit overwhelming as there are so many columns and not a clear sense of what is counted (or not) towards your seniority.

This post is an attempt to make some sense of all those columns! The only thing that counts for your seniority with the DDSB is your continuous employment, meaning the amount of time that you have been continuously employed by the Board as a permanent elementary teacher. If there is a break in your service (e.g., you quit for a few years), your service is interrupted and your seniority would begin again at zero years. This service is listed in the first column to the right of the date your employment began.

All the additional columns to the right of the continuous employment column show the previous experience you may have brought with you from: previous elementary experience in Durham, secondary experience, other Ontario experience, Canadian experience, and other experience such as an LTO assignment. These do NOT count as seniority, but are used as tie breakers (starting from the DDSB elementary experience and so on) if two members have the exact same amount of seniority and ONE must be declared surplus.

Also remember that your seniority is very different from your experience credit, which determines at what year you will be placed on the salary grid. This is where all that "other" experience comes in to play (LTOs, employment with another school board, etc.).

If you are concerned whether or not you have been rightfully declared surplus, please contact the local office for advice.