HILTON-O'BRIEN: Alberta’s teachers are striking – but against whom?

"The student who attacked me was back in class two days later."That’s not a line from an American ghetto. That’s from an Alberta classroom. And stories like that are behind the preliminary strike vote by Alberta’s teachers.In March, a mediator brought back a settlement proposal. Teachers rejected it — 62% against. The reasons are significant: wages haven't kept pace with inflation, classrooms are crammed, and supports for kids with disabilities have disappeared into thin air. Unfortunately, the very number and complexity of the issues work against them. You see, each issue is caused by a different level of government..Let’s take wages, for example. While there are minor variations for local boards, they are negotiated through the "Teacher's Employer Bargaining Association." The Government of Alberta holds the purse strings. The mediator has offered a 3% annual raise for the next four years. That barely keeps pace with inflation — and Statistics Canada figures show that teachers' real incomes have declined by 18% over the past decade. Meanwhile, nurses secured a 15% immediate bump plus multi-year increases. Unsurprisingly, teachers don’t feel they're being treated fairly.But wages are just the start. Teachers complain about huge classes. One teacher told me about a class of 38 students — five of them with special needs. Another speaks of an autistic student who is 'mainstreamed' into a classroom. “He plays with the sink and screams. That’s literally all he does — all day.” But that isn’t an issue for the Government of Alberta: classroom sizes are largely set by the school board..Classroom sizes can be massaged, because school boards only report average classroom size — if they report it at all. Suppose you have specialized schools with classrooms of 17 or fewer — say, schools on Hutterite colonies. That means you can have some classes of 38 — but the average classroom size reported to the board and to the Government of Alberta seems fine.At the same time, school boards claim that they are keeping administration costs in check: the funding manual allows them to spend a maximum of 3.6% on administrative costs. However, only superintendents are included under administrative expenses. For example, when we see a board with a Director of Inclusive Education (DEI,) it appears that position has to be covered by the instructional budget.Let me spell out what that means: every dollar spent on arguably unnecessary programs like DEI is a dollar not spent on teaching. That leaves too little room to hire enough teachers — so class sizes balloon. And that is all on the local school districts..The lack of educational assistants (EAs) points to a different level of government. For years, Ottawa followed what is called 'Jordan's Principle.' Every First Nations student in the public schools had funding for their own EA. School boards — and provincial governments — became reliant on the program.This past February, the Government of Canada decided to discontinue Jordan’s Principle funding for First Nations students in public schools. The government had not anticipated the program's immense popularity. First Nations students have moved into public schools in droves. From 600,000 approved EA requests in 2021, there were 3,000,000 in 2023. Has the Government of Alberta stepped in to fill this gap? Of course not. Did school boards step up? Not a chance. .Underlying this is the educational idea of mainstreaming — that we can make the lives of kids with developmental disabilities better if we keep them in mainstream classrooms. It’s the noble idea behind the concept of integrating children with developmental disabilities into regular classrooms. (And whether it works may be questionable.)In the meantime, mainstreaming means we require a lot of educational assistants in Alberta classrooms. And the federal government, which was bankrolling extra aides — is bowing out. And frankly, the strike won’t affect them at all.This strike isn't about a few dollars more on a paycheck. It's about teachers saying they're done with a system where bureaucracy grows fat while classrooms are starved. It's about kids being dumped into mainstream classes without the supports they need — and teachers expected to hold it all together with duct tape and goodwill..The truth is that ATA management has painted itself into a corner. Teachers are angry about mainstreaming — but their management demands more funding for it. Teachers are angry about wages and classroom sizes — but the fashionable programs ATA management promotes are diverting money from instruction budgets. Sooner or later, teachers will catch on. We already hear rumblings.So teachers are likely to strike this fall, but it isn’t clear if they are aiming at the right target. Is it the Government of Alberta? The local school boards? The federal government? Or their own union management?The best solution is for ATA management to take responsibility. They need to back off from mainstreaming, drop their ideological — and financial — commitment to fashionable ideas like DEI and focus like a laser on the two issues that matter most to teachers: pay and classroom conditions.And until they do, strike action won't resolve the concerns of classroom teachers.

HILTON-O'BRIEN: Alberta’s teachers are striking – but against whom?

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