With Montreal students back in class, some of the city's big school boards find themselves with a major shortage of French teachers.
French schools have seen enrollment explode lately, in part due to the influx of refugees coming to Quebec, with an average of 1,000 additional students each year. This means expanding schools to temporary buildings to make more classrooms.
The problem is there aren't enough teachers to fill those classrooms.
"We're forecasting for the next five years another 7,000 new students, which means new classrooms and new teachers," Marie-Josee Mastromonaco of the Commission Scolaire de Montreal told CTV Montreal.
Because of that spike, the school board is looking to hire at least 70 full-time teachers, immediately.
At the moment substitutes are doing what they can to fill the void, and in places they can't retirees have returned to help their former schools.
The problem isn't unique to French schools.
Several schools within the English Montreal School Board have popular emersion programs which are lacking teachers as well
"We're talking about not just teaching French, but teaching history in French, math in French and other courses," EMSB spokesperson Mike Cohen said. "We have some grades where the kids barely speak a word of English."
Some of the reasons for the shortage of new in Quebec are lower salaries than other provinces and lack of job security.
Earlier this year school boards from British Columbia were in Montreal at the McGill education career fair looking to hire teachers for French emersion programs. Along with permanent jobs, which can take up to five years to get here in Montreal, schools were also offering higher salaries and a moving allowance.