Technically, Elizabeth Greene is a lunchroom supervisor at her children’s school. In reality, she has filled in for almost every role there—early childhood educator, special needs assistant, educational assistant, office staff, and teacher from kindergarten to grade eight, for both English and French immersion.

Greene, who is using a pseudonym to protect her job, is not a teacher and does not have a teaching degree. She previously had a career in the health sector, but left that job when she had children. She is an emergency replacement person, a non-teacher paid about $142 a day to fill in whenever her east Toronto school can’t find a qualified occasional teacher to cover a staff member’s absence.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Greene didn’t even know this job existed. But for the past three school years, her availability to step in whenever and wherever needed has been vital to keep classes running. Some weeks, she’s worked as an emergency replacement every day. Others, three out of five days. She estimates there were only two weeks last year when she worked at the school exclusively as lunchroom supervisor, the role she was originally hired to do.

Unbeknownst to many parents, on any given school day across Toronto, students are supervised by people who are not trained or certified as teachers. During the 2017-18 school year, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) used emergency replacements 4,131 times, according to data The Local obtained through a freedom of information request. During the last school year, between September 2024 and the end of April 2025 alone, the board used replacements a whopping 51,727 times—a 1,152 percent spike in just seven years. Putting non-teachers in the classroom is no longer something done in extraordinary emergencies. It’s become a regular part of how the TDSB operates.

In many cases, schools rely on people like Greene—individuals who are already well-known and involved in the school, such as lunchroom supervisors, parents or guardians who volunteer at the school, aspiring teachers who are not yet certified, or retired educators.

For her part, Greene loves the job. Working at her children’s school, she’s familiar with the teachers, students, and often their families, and she wants to dispel common misperceptions about emergency replacements.

“Most people think that we’re babysitting, and we’re really not,” she said. She may not be in front of the class, giving students lessons on new material, she said, but “we’re managing behaviour…We are guiding them through the material that they’ve already learned, or helping them along the way. We are, in fact, a lot of the times, teaching.”

But how smoothly that day goes depends greatly on what plans and materials the teacher whom she’s replacing has left for her, she explained, because there is no training and little guidance given on what to do with a classful of students.

“No one really says, ‘This is how you be an in-class [teacher].’ It’s just kind of like, ‘Here’s your attendance folder, and here’s your keys, and Godspeed.’”

And even in the best scenarios, emergency replacement people are not certified teachers. Some parents, teachers, and union leaders say the increasing reliance on them contributes to a lack of consistency and predictability for students, learning loss, and an erosion of the teaching profession. Some worry it even puts students in danger, as emergency replacement people may not know how to handle situations like bullying, and could even harm students themselves.

“There is absolutely a possibility for children in schools to experience harassment or abuse, either verbally or physically from one of these adults in a school,” said Denise Handlarski, an associate professor in the school of education at Trent University, who teaches teacher training programs.

Under the Education Act, school boards can appoint people who aren’t teachers to teach in an emergency. The only requirement is that they be 18 years of age or older, and have a high school diploma or equivalent.

The TDSB also has its own requirements. According to the board, emergency replacement people must be non-teachers who have been screened and interviewed, and have submitted a police reference check to the board. They are individuals who are recommended by school administrators. And they’re provided with key policy and procedures at the board, like its code of conduct, and given further training by school administrators as required.

When teachers are away, school administrators first try to fill the opening with an occasional teacher (a supply teacher) from the TDSB’s occasional teacher roster, the board said. If they can’t secure one, they look to other staff in the school to fill in. And when that’s not possible, emergency replacement people are called in.

Between September 2024 and the end of April 2025 alone, the board used replacements a whopping 51,727 times—a 1,152 percent spike in just seven years.

Emergency replacements are used far more frequently in elementary schools than secondary schools, the TDSB data shows. Between September and April of this past school year, emergency replacements were used 42,000 times at the elementary level, more than four times as often as at the secondary level.

In an email to The Local, the TDSB said its dramatic increase in use of emergency replacements was attributed to sick leaves and a shortage of available occasional teachers. The number of people on the TDSB’s occasional teacher roster changes daily, but as of June 30, there were 3,684 occasional elementary teachers and 1,742 occasional secondary teachers. In spite of the size of this roster, the TDSB said its school administrators aren’t always able to secure occasional teachers because they have the flexibility to choose when and where they work. Occasional teachers are also able to work in multiple school boards and often pick up long-term occasional positions in other boards, the TDSB said.

When it comes to sick leaves, school boards across the province have been struggling with the frequency of employees taking time off work for illness for years now, since they stopped being able to bank sick days in 2012.

In 2022-23, the TDSB’s permanent employees used an average of 19.68 sick days, roughly four days more than the provincial average. A December 2024 report by the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario found the TDSB’s costs for accommodating those sick days ballooned to $139 million, up 70 percent from $82 million in 2014-15. It also found the TDSB was not effectively monitoring and managing its employees’ use of sick days, and did not have an attendance management program to minimize the abuse of sick time.

Focusing on inappropriate use of sick days, however, won’t help teachers struggling with the demands of the job. Erinn Clark, a kindergarten teacher at the TDSB’s Blake Street Junior Public School, was vehement when she said she does not believe teachers are taking advantage of the system. Over her 21 years as a teacher, the job has become much more complex, as have the needs of students, yet teachers aren’t provided with the necessary support—the extra staff, funding, materials, and resources—to address them.

“So we do see teachers needing a day [off] to kind of regroup after a really tough day,” Clark said, noting that workplace injuries are also common.

While there are many factors leading to schools’ reliance on emergency replacement people, a shortage of qualified teachers is not one of them, according to Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

Citing figures from the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, Brown noted there are more than 40,000 certified teachers in the province who are not working in the profession. She attributed this to many of the same reasons teachers are using more sick days, like increasing violence and lack of support, all leading to high rates of stress and burnout.

“They’re leaving the profession in droves,” Brown said.

Martha Hradowy, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, echoed her sentiments.

“[T]his isn’t about a lack of qualified people. It’s about a lack of respect for the profession and a lack of political will to invest in education,” Hradowy wrote in an email.

Instead of fixing the root causes, she said, “we’re seeing band-aid solutions like putting unqualified personnel in classrooms. That’s not safe, it’s not sustainable, and it does a disservice to students.”

“Very little is asked of us: make sure you submit the attendance and keep them alive.”

Some schools have a harder time finding qualified occasional teachers than others. Several teachers told The Local that the high cost of living in Toronto and the inconvenience of travel may deter occasional teachers from commuting to certain parts of the city. Some occasional teachers also avoid certain schools that have a reputation for being more difficult to work at, which exacerbates inequities.

For example, Jana King’s school in Scarborough, which has a large number of students with high needs, relies on emergency replacement people almost every day. King is an ESL teacher with the TDSB. Many of her students are refugees or have challenging family dynamics. Yet the school does not have enough educational assistants, special needs assistants, and child and youth workers to go around.

When the school can’t get an occasional teacher or emergency replacement person to cover for absent teachers, King gets pulled from teaching ESL, or a special education teacher is asked to fill in.

“Then the kids that need the most support aren’t getting it,” King said. “It’s horrible.”

At her school, the emergency replacement people are often lunchtime supervisors, and often racialized women, who are subject to discrimination and granted little respect from students and their families.

“That causes a problem,” King said, especially when teachers don’t leave plans for them.“Then this lovely woman’s left there going, ‘what am I supposed to do?’”

When it comes to securing occasional teachers, bureaucracy can also be a hindrance. Grace Douglas is a certified teacher, having previously worked in post-secondary education. So when she saw that her children’s TDSB elementary school was struggling to cover teacher absences, she wanted to help.

“I thought, well, I could just jump in there, and it wasn’t easy to do that,” said Douglas, who is using a pseudonym so as not to affect her ability to get work.

As a certified teacher, she discovered she was ineligible to be an emergency replacement person. So she applied to be added to the TDSB’s occasional teacher roster. She submitted her application this April, and went through an involved process that included screening and reference checks. She was interviewed in June, and finally offered a job in July, after the school year had finished. She was told that because the TDSB’s human resources department was stretched, they couldn’t hire people quickly enough.

In the meantime, Douglas saw how teacher absences affected her children. Her son’s grade six teacher was frequently away on Wednesdays, and her daughter’s grade eight teacher was heavily involved in school sports, so would be gone every time there was a track meet or rugby match. Sometimes the principal would have to fill in for them, or their classes would be combined with others.

There were days when Douglas would have preferred to keep her children home if she could because at school, they would be on their Chromebooks, just playing games when their teachers were away. Both children loved their teachers, she said, but when those teachers were absent, “you could tell that they weren’t learning the curriculum.”