Public school teachers in the Sea to Sky Corridor are asking local school trustees to repudiate their own provincial bargaining group's initiative that would see the Province claw back 15 per cent of teachers' pay as a response to the current B.C.-wide teachers' job action.
In a letter to the Sea to Sky School District board of trustees, Beth Miller, Sea to Sky Teachers' Association (SSTA) president, on Wednesday (Nov. 2) also threatened not to support current trustees in their bids for re-election on Nov. 19 unless something is done to address a district-wide shortage of teacher assistants helping students with special needs.
Late last month, the B.C. Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA) applied to the B.C. Labour Relations Board (LRB) for the right to charge the B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF) up to 15 per cent of teachers' pay while the teachers' job action -launched in September - continues.
The SSTA letter asks local school trustees to "publicly speak out against BCPSEA's LRB application and acknowledge that while teachers may not be attending administrative meetings or writing formal report cards, they are certainly not working any less than they were before."
Rather than do less work during the job action, local teachers "have changed focus from administrivia to a focus on teaching and learning," Miller wrote, adding that teachers are now working in their 10th year under an "illegal" contract that does not include class-size and composition provisions.
SSTA also expressed concerns about the number of students with special needs who are not receiving the attention required by provincial legislation. According to the letter, district-wide, 17 classes at the elementary level and 144 classes at the secondary level each have three or more special-needs students requiring the hiring of new teacher assistants to meet their needs.
While school district officials provided assurances at the board's Oct. 12 meeting that action to address the shortage was forthcoming, "few of those additional measures have been implemented," Miller's letter states.
"Stawamus Elementary is even now being asked to reconfigure most of its classes (a significant disruption so late in the school year) and Signal Hill Elementary [in Pemberton], the school identified in your October meeting as having the most challenging situation, still faces exceptionally high needs in most of their intermediate classes with no long-term resolution as of yet," Miller wrote. "This is unacceptable for students, parents and teachers alike."
The SSTA letter asks that the board "immediately" put in place the additional resources, "even if it comes at the expense of other operational considerations."
"If we don't hear from you directly, we will assume that BCSPEA has spoken for you, and will cast our votes on Nov. 19 accordingly," the letter concludes.
During a presentation about the issues at Wednesday's (Nov. 9) school board meeting in Squamish, Miller said that as elected officials, trustees have a duty to be advocates for proper school funding and for teachers' rights. She lambasted the "ridiculousness" of the 15 per cent clawback initiative, saying that whereas the BCTF paid a $500,000 fine for a two-week work stoppage a few years ago, the clawback move would see BCTF pay up to $30 million per month even though the current job action has been deemed legal.
She said many classroom situations that existed in September -"in many cases, well past September" - in corridor schools were "unacceptable."
"Most of our concerns about class size and composition, we don't lay at your feet because we understand that you have budget constraints," Miller said.
"However, we do expect that you will be advocates at the provincial level for our concerns."
School Board Chair Rick Price said that rather than have individual board members comment, the board would meet behind closed doors and formulate a single, collective response to the teachers' concerns and get back to the SSTA "in short order," perhaps as early as today (Nov. 11).
