BCTF E-News
Vol. 9, No. 5, March 1, 2010
This week's headlines:
THRONE SPEECH TURNS A BLIND EYE
Ignoring the painful reality of school closures, oversized classes, dwindling support for students with special needs, and boards of education struggling to manage, the throne speech contained vague statements with no detail or mention of any monetary commitment. The list includes:
- a new Master Teacher program
- public/private partnerships to provide preschools for three- and four-year olds
- greater parent involvement in shaping the education to a child’s needs and passions
- new forms of schooling for greater choice and diversity
- voluntary Kindergarten for this September and full day for all by September 2011
- greater focus on resources for students and less on administrative costs
- neighbourhood learning centres to meet the needs of families seven days a week.
The BCTF contacted the deputy minister of education following these announcements to get further details and was told that the ministry knew nothing about them and had not been involved in their development.
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BRACING FOR THE BUDGET
The provincial budget is to be announced March 2. Teachers and parents need and expect an increase in education funding to deal with overcrowded classrooms, reduced student services, depleted district resources, and overdue school maintenance.
This developing funding crisis was not caused by boards of education but by a government downloading costs that are not taken into account in the funding formula, such as:
- loss of annual facilities grant
- teacher salary and benefit increases that were provincially negotiated
- new carbon tax and carbon-offset charges
- increased MSP and WCB premiums
- new costs for implementing full-day Kindergarten
- additional costs of provincially legislated class-size limits.
The Association of School Board Officials (formerly secretary-treasurers) has said that the education system desperately needs an immediate injection of $300 million in 2010–11 to offset a funding shortfall.
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BCTF BUDGET RESPONSE PLANS
The BCTF will be developing its response to the budget immediately after March 2. A detailed report will be distributed at the upcoming Annual General Meeting outlining strategies and actions to address the chronic public education funding crisis. Beginning with the collaboration last year between the BCTF, BCSTA, BCCPAC, and CUPE-BC, on a joint letter on funding, it is hoped that work will continue in building networks with community allies. One such network is the Coalition to Build a Better BC (CBBBC) which is a broad-based coalition of community service and community action groups working with labour under the auspices of the BCFed (see below). Write letters and e-mails to politicians and the media:
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BUILD A BETTER BC
The mission of the Coalition to Build a Better BC is to bring community service groups, cultural and arts associations, and unions, together as one voice to call on the provincial government to:
- immediately stop eliminating public and community services
- fulfil their legislative responsibility to provide fair and consistent funding to support public services and community groups
- work in consultation with groups and individuals to build pubic and community services that give every individual the democratic opportunity to participate in building a better BC.
Two events have been planned for the near future:
The Teach In--Saturday, March 20, 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the Vancouver Public Library
Coalition to Build a Better BC rally to stop cuts to public and community services--Saturday, April 10, 11:00 a.m., at the Vancouver Art Gallery
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12,000 CLASSES EXCEEDING THE CLASS-COMPOSITION LIMITS
The government’s own legislation sets the limit at three students with an Individual Education Plan per class. In 2010 there are close to 12,000 class-composition violations. That is up from 11,000 in 2009 and 10,000 in 2008. The data presented by the minister of education also shows 3,229 class-size violations with more than 30 students for the 2009–10 school year. That is down a mere 100 classes from 2008–09, but still higher than in 2007–08 when there were 3,179 violations. It has been more than four years since BC’s teachers went on strike to improve classroom conditions, and in that time no progress has been made and government has refused to fund its own legislation.
The full report can be found in Overview of class size and composition in British Columbia Public Schools for 2005–10, at the Ministry of Education website http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/district_data_summary.php.
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THE DORSEY REMEDY
Arbitrator James Dorsey has delivered his decision on remedies for the class-size composition grievances from 2006–08. Using a formula that weighs the class size and composition along with the length of time it was taught, the teachers affected were awarded a predetermined amount of release time. It is the hope that once the issues of 2006–08 have been fully resolved, further costly provincial arbitrations for the as-yet-unresolved 2008–10 grievances can be avoided. Dorsey’s interpretation of the legislation has finally resulted in remedies, but the outcome is still unsatisfactory for teachers who want educationally sound classes, not release time to make up for the principals’ and superintendents’ bad judgement and misunderstanding.
For a more complete account, go to the March edition of Teacher Newsmagazine at www.bctf.ca.
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PENSION CONSULTATION OVER
In excess of 8,000 teachers responded to a survey conducted by the BCTF into their views on the Inflation Adjustment Account (IAA) and the ability to index pensions into the future. Both active and retired members were well represented among the respondents. The data showed strong support for maintaining full indexing (88%), and also indicated clearly that members were willing to match employer contributions with their own in order to preserve full indexing.
The BCTF Executive Committee will be bringing recommendations to the AGM. For more detail, go to the March edition of Teacher Newsmagazine at www.bctf.ca.
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FRASER INSTITUTE TURNS TO BLACK
In an unexpected move, CanWest announced that the Vancouver Sun and The Province would not be publishing the annual Fraser Institute ratings of BC’s elementary schools this year. Various reasons have been given for this decision, including financial woes, Olympic coverage, and dwindling parental interest and support.
Meanwhile the Fraser Institute, attempting to diminish the significance of this move, claims it will not be impacted since the Black newspaper chain, which owns the majority of smaller, local newspapers across BC, has confirmed that it will publish the rankings on a community-by-community basis.
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ALBERTA TEACHERS TO GET 5.99% INCREASE
In a decision handed down earlier this month, an arbitrator ruled that teachers working in the province’s public, separate, and francophone schools, should receive an increase in salaries and allowances amounting to 5.99% in the 2009–10 school year. The increase is consistent with the average growth in the earnings of Albertans from 2008 to 2009 as reported by Statistics Canada. The arbitration decision upholds the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s (ATA) position concerning the application of a formula linking teacher salary increases with annual changes in Alberta average weekly earnings. The formula is embedded in the Memorandum of Agreement between the province and the ATA and the resulting five-year collective agreements that came into effect in the 2007–08 school year in all 62 public, separate, and francophone school districts across the province.
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LET’S TEST EVERYONE
Michael Smith of Tennessee, writing in the latest issue of Kappan, proposes that everyone— students, teachers, parents, and citizens—take national tests. Such a test, he says, could be computer-adaptive, based on standards that span preschool to the PhD. Using mathematics as an example, everyone could have a personal national mathematics score. With this in hand, students could compare their scores to their teachers and parents; workers could compare their scores to other workers and supervisors and to every other citizen in the United States. Ultimately, of course, such results could be used for employment decisions and continued screening throughout a person’s career.
Go to http://pdkintl.org/ for the full story, Kappan, February 2010.
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